


Roll the Dice

by Mangacat



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Gore, Language, M/M, Major Character Injury, PTSD, combat scenario
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-22
Updated: 2012-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 23:19:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/655486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangacat/pseuds/Mangacat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Pvt. Jared Padalecki gets gravely injured in combat, he receives highly advanced and experimental treatment that barely saves his life. He comes out of it forever changed and struggling with a shitload emotional baggage. His biggest challenge however is facing the man who saved his life and made him what he is now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Ok, so this was supposed to have been a big bang for last year, but yeah you see now how that turned out. However, I endeavoured to still give the story the format and enlisted an incredible staff of collaborators to bring this story to you. So thanks to you [](http://insane-songbird.livejournal.com/profile)[**insane_songbird**](http://insane-songbird.livejournal.com/) for being alpha reader, cheerleader, slave driver and pointing out all the stuff that I hoped everyone would miss *g*. To [](http://bflyw.livejournal.com/profile)[**bflyw**](http://bflyw.livejournal.com/) for waiting patiently for the story, making gorgeous art and designing this masterpost, as well as producing the pdf that will go up as soon as posting is done. To [](http://candygramme.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://candygramme.livejournal.com/)**candygramme** my unwavering beta who was so taken with the story that she made me a MIXTAPE! I hope y’all are going to have fun!

33N 25’ 34.48’’ – 68E 26’ 36.42’’

1100 hrs LT 05/20/2009

The sun beat down with a vicious force, turning the godforsaken dustbowl into a cauldron that seemed to be designed to do nothing except sweat people until they were nothing but shrivelled little husks without the slightest bit of moisture left inside them. At least that’s how he felt in his fatigues, sweat trickling down his back, sand rubbing his skin raw in the most obnoxious of places. God, he was so ready for his tour to be over already. The thrumming of the humvee’s engine felt like it was rattling him like a sack of bones, every single hole on this track that was a dirty excuse for a highway jolting through his system. He glared out into the desert as if the hairy eyeball could actually convince the landscape to turn into something else than brown, rocky wasteland. It didn’t of course. But it served to distract him enough that he nearly jumped out of his skin when a hand landed heavily on his shoulder. His fingers tightened reflexively near the trigger of his MP-16, before he reminded himself that he was just in a supply convoy right now and not in the middle of inner city combat.

“Hey, JT, what’s with the silent treatment? You gotta lighten up, man, two fricking weeks. Only fourteen days and ten hours, and we’re out of here, hasta la vista, baby and hello sweet fucking home Alabama and all that shit.”

“Jesus, Chad, you asshole, you startled the crap out of me. How many times do I have to tell you not to do that? One of these days you’re going to get an elbow to the face just on principle alone.”

“Awww, you only say that because you love me, man. Have you thought about what you wanna do when you get home?”

“I’m going to fuck your momma, Murray; maybe that’ll shut you up for a minute.”

“Hey, don’t you talk no shit about my momma, or I’ll kick your ass. Jeez, you’re in a prissy mood today, whatever’s crawled up yours truly and died there?”

Chad grinned mischievously, since even though anyone else would be appalled by their routines to them it was just friendly banter. Sarcasm and blatant insults to get the edge off and put the stress on hold for a couple of minutes at a time. Their Staff Sergeant had tried to get them to keep their tongues in check for the first couple of weeks of their tour and then just threw the towel and let them be. Jared felt his muscles twitch into half a smile, but his sullen mood wouldn’t be dispelled so easily.

“’s nothing, I just have a weird feeling ‘bout today. Like something’s in the air, you know?”

“Damn straight something’s in the air. That’s you and the beans, bro.”

Jared answered that one by boxing Chad on the arm, hard. He ignored his best friend’s indignant squawk, but the smile that had been tugging at the corner of his mouth got a little broader. Chad was right, he was being ridiculous. They were in a back zone and things had been quiet the whole morning, no reason why that should change any time soon. He settled back, a little less tense and watched the flares at the horizon slowly turn into houses and people a couple of miles down the lane.  
  
~*~

The sky was on fire.

Well, not the sky exactly, just about half the block of houses that lined the main street, but with the crackling flames adding to the scorching midday heat, devouring everything in their path and licking high into the air, it sure felt like it. Their convoy was trapped in an ambush, hoarse screams and rattling machine gun fire, splintering sounds where bullets hit stone, soft thwups where they hit flesh, radios going crazy.

“Shots fired, all units out and find cover NOW. I repeat all units out and in position.”

Jared was going to tattoo ‘I told you so’ onto Chad’s fucking _forehead_.

For the moment though, the more pressing incentive was staying alive and regrouping, and if he dragged his no good best friend down behind a wall that was sprayed with a salvo of high caliber ammunition half a second later, it was only with fonts and rainbow colours in mind. The sounds of men fighting for their lives rang loud in his ears, and he tried to orient himself to find out how the rest of their unit was holding up and which streets those bastards were holed up in. He could hear Chad shouting directions at him, but he could barely hear him over the blood rushing in his ears, and the urgency of the fight pumping adrenaline into his veins. They advanced together, relying on signs for communication, and Jared felt himself fall into the motions that had been trained and tried countless times now, but which still didn’t completely quench the terrifying sensory overload that threatened to overwhelm him every time he found himself in combat. Then there was a thin whistling sound, like a shrill pipe just this side of being audible, and he knew something was going to come from above. When the sound suddenly cut out, and only a quiet swoosh remained, he knew it was going to be close. He only had a split second to shout and shove Chad into a stumbling sprawl, before a powerful pulse rocked the ground, and the world suddenly turned hot and dark.

“Jared, Jesus, Jared, you stupid fucker, open your goddamn fucking eyes, or so help me God… I’m…”

The world was murky, dull, like a grey had been laid out over everything, and if he didn’t feel himself blinking, he wouldn’t be convinced that his eyes were open.

“That’s it JT, just you…”

The rest of his body was a little slow on the response time though, and he wondered why Chad sounded so urgent, since there was no way he was getting up anytime soon. Must’ve had too much of that fricking goat’s piss they called liquor around here last night. His head was heavy like lead, and there was some unpleasant tingling going on in his nether regions. Something didn’t quite add up though.

“Just hang on, man, pl…”

For instance, he didn’t think that the skin around your elbow was supposed to look that frayed around the edges. The fabric of his fatigues was soaked, and he could only stare and think, God, his momma was going to kill him when she found out about this mess.

“Jared? JARED! DON’T YOU FUCKING…”


	2. Chapter One

35N 23’ 32.40’’ – 103W 53’ 41.84’’

 

1800 hrs LT 06/13/2009

 

The sound of the ventilation system grated into the depth of Jensen’s brain, straight to where a serious migraine wanted to form, but he set part of his frontal lobes aside to meditate it away, or at least he liked to think of it that way. Normal people called it denial, or so he’d heard. He hated migraines though, so he just didn’t get them, mind over matter, or something like that. The little pop-up window in the corner of his screen told him that he had missed dinner – again – and that there was a new arrival due today. He skimmed the file cursorily and then left his lab to walk down the bare concrete corridor that led up to elevators to the surface. Chris was waiting for him close to the sliding doors already, and he huffed out a gruff greeting when the door swished open for Jensen, before turning to look out into the hangar with his hands buried in the dented pockets of his lab coat.

 

“We got an ETA yet?”

 

“Station said something about ten minutes. What do you think of this one? Read the file?”

 

“Skimmed it. I’ll have to have a look myself, but that sounds like some pretty extensive damage.”

 

“Yeah, from what I heard, they barely got him stabilized enough for transport. Sometimes I wonder why they even bother with those cases, since most of them only end up in the can anyway.”

 

Jensen grinned a little cynically. It might sound conceited, the way they treated the subjects more like things than persons, but it was really the only way to get by in their job. If you got attached, you got hurt, period. Didn’t mean that Jensen was very good playing by the rules, but for the most part he managed to keep his distance. He had to, or he wouldn’t have been able to be good at what he did. The best even.

 

“Yes, but you know you like a challenge. And this one’s surely going to be one, no doubt about that. But if he’s a fighter, he’ll pull through.”

 

Chris looked at him out of the corner of his eyes and then back out the opening of the hangar where a cloud of dust was visible, blown up by the chopper that approached the airfield.

 

“Well, it looks like the party’s about to start then. Let’s put those tax dollars to work, shall we?”

 

Jensen found himself back in those bleak corridors about five storeys underneath the surface of the earth, following the familiar blip of a heart monitor on the way to his lab. He always marvelled at the way big, agile young men seemed to be reduced to looking small and whimsical in hospital beds. Maybe it was because his patients were without exception largely comatose, and so close to death that they were beyond the help of ordinary medical means. No one else was ever considered for their program for good reason. Jensen rubbed at the bridge of his nose under his glasses. Sometimes he wondered if they had the right to play god like this. He attempted to prolong lives by any means available, since an ordinary clinical trial was not exactly an option for their methods. But then he reminded himself that they _were_ saving lives, the lives of young and dedicated people who had put themselves in harm’s way for their country, and the argument about whether they had the right to withhold the treatments that could save them fit just as well the other way around. What they learned this way would someday revolutionize medical procedures and trauma therapy all over the world, or so he hoped. It was a fine line that Jensen had to mark out and tread anew every day, but most nights he lost little sleep about his musings. Maybe it was because he didn’t sleep all that much anyway.  

 

A tall and imposing figure waited at the entrance of his lab, clad in a pristine uniform, cap tucked neatly under his arm. He looked as smart and unruffled as every time he brought Jensen an order for a new arrival, but as the med-techs rolled the bed into the lab and began to set up the equipment, Jensen hesitated in the door where he noticed the fatigue deepening the lines on Lieutenant Commander JD Morgan’s face.

 

“Commander,” he received a curt nod as a greeting, nothing new there. ”The journey went without a problem, I hope?”

 

“Sure thing, if you call a nerve-wracking three hour ride through the desert, and two code blacks in the air ‘without a hitch’, be my guest.”

 

Jensen looked beyond the glass door that had slid closed in front of them before glancing back at the Lieutenant Commander. It wasn’t anything they hadn’t had before, not even close to the worst actually. Still, the tension was palpable, but he couldn’t really put his finger on what was different.

 

“Is everything alright?”

 

“Yes, sure. Let’s get this over with then, alright?”

 

They’d done this often enough, but protocol couldn’t be circumvented and records had to be kept in order, no matter how top secret and confidential your work was.

 

“Prof. Dr. Jensen Ross Ackles, through the power invested in me by the government of the United States of America, I grant you permission to start emergency restorative treatment on subject 0719-J11854T-P82, order effective immediately. Good luck, Doc.”

 

Jensen took a deep breath and nodded at Morgan.

 

“Good to have this over with, I always feel like I’m about to get married when you start that speech.”

 

Finally, Jensen saw a small smile twitch at the edge of Morgan’s lips, but the concerned frown never left the man’s face. He stepped forward to the opening doors to get to work when a hand on his arm stopped him in his tracks.

 

“Ackles, I… I’d rather you save this one, alright?”

 

Jensen looked back at the Commander’s hooded eyes and couldn’t shake the feeling that it was strangely personal this time around. Normally he wouldn’t be bothered by that, couldn’t be, but he still felt the need to reassure the man he’d worked with for several years now.

 

“You know that if anybody is going to be able to do it, it’s me.”

 

There was no bragging involved here, just a simple truth.

 

With those words, he left the Lieutenant Commander standing outside, while the swish of the doors indicated their closing behind him. He had work to do.

 

Jensen stepped up to the control panel where Chris was already sitting, tapping away at the keyboard with his eyes fixed firmly to the screens.

 

“What have you got?”

 

“Enough to open a scrap yard, once we’re done here. Polytraumatic injuries, patient in haemodynamic shock, grade III haemorrhagic renal failure, with hypercalciaemia and billirubinaemia and another grade III open comminuted fracture of the femur with rupture trauma to the abductor group and the patellar tendon; add spontaneous supracondylar humeral amputation due to disruption trauma on the right side and that’s not even counting all the soft tissue damage due to the shrapnel and the head region. Plus, I think we might get a problem with pulmonary decompensation real soon. Where do you want to start?”

 

Jensen looked at the preliminary scans and diagnostics sharply, ignoring the bustle of the medical personnel behind him with practiced ease.

 

“I’d say let’s work our way outwards. Take care of the lung and heart first, then see if the kidneys are salvageable. Then we take care of the extremities and leave the head for last, he’s going to need to breathe a lot more urgently than he needs to see. Get the shrapnel out as much as possible if it’s in our way, but leave it for later if it’s not in our immediate reach. I don’t really like how the muscle damage is looking around the fracture, we’re probably going to have to add compensatory enhancement to the left side as well.”

 

Chris nodded and added the note to the preliminaries. Then he stood and barked out the orders to prepare the operation now. Jensen sat down dragged the keyboard near, keeping an eye on the less than stellar vitals and the cameras that allowed him to follow the surgical procedures while he started calibrating the labs interface for pulmonary tissue replacement. This was going to be a long night.

 

_He remembered the summer when he’d fallen out of the big oak in his Granma’s backyard and broke his arm. He had played in that tree countless times without ever so much as wobbling, but the branch he’d stepped on had some loose bark halfway up, and his foot just slid off sideways when he put weight on the patch. There was a stuffed and heavy feeling in his head in the stretching second he just floated in the air, a lurch in his stomach when he felt like he was just going to stay suspended in midair for a moment, before the ground rushed towards him with dizzying speed. He remembered how the thud had reverberated through his whole body, and that there was little pain in the first couple of seconds. Only him blinking, stunned and thinking about how funny his Gran looked when she raced off the porch in a speed he wouldn’t have thought was in the old girl at her age. They had rushed to the hospital instantly after, and he had spent the night puking from a mild concussion, vertigo making the world fuzzy and nauseating, but thankfully overlaying the experience of getting his arm set and plastered up to above his elbow. He hadn’t been able to move his arm for half the summer or go swimming, which was way worse in his book. Also, the sweat on his skin in the cast itched something fierce, and there wasn’t really anything he could do about it. And he sure remembered the scolding he’d received from his Momma when she’d found him trying to scratch on the inside with a stick._

 

_The same itch was assaulting him now, and he couldn’t move his arm to rub at the irritated skin._

 

_Come to think of it, he couldn’t move much of anything right now._

 

_Somehow he thought that should have bothered him more than it did._

 

_It was just annoying. Just a little itch._

 

_Like blood flowing back into a limb that’d fallen asleep, nothing more._

 

“Jensen, you gotta leave. Right now, I mean it, you haven’t been out of here for about thirty-six hours, and if you go on, you’re just going to faint from exhaustion and be no use to him for days.”

 

Jensen swatted Chris away like the angry flies that had been buzzing around his head for hours. His partner was quite a bit more persistent than the buzz and dragged Jensen up from his seat like he was a toddler. Come to think of it, he felt quite like one too, legs buckling under his weight like they were made of straw. Nevertheless, he reached out to the keyboard, only a couple of calculations left until they were set, but Chris didn’t let him get near the  
controls.

 

“Jensen, Jen… come on, you gotta get out of here. We’ve got the internal damage under control, he’s going to make it through the night, you hear me? You need sleep, or you won’t be able to work your magic on the cosmetic bits, alright? Now, let’s go.”

 

Jensen opened his mouth to say something. He wanted Chris to let go and let him get back to work that instant, but nothing save for a garbled sigh came past his lips as he was wrestled out of the lab and down the hallway to his suite. He vaguely sensed how Chris dragged his lab coat off and wrangled the shirt over his head without bothering with the buttons. When he was down to his boxers, his friend shoved him into the shower cubicle and the shock of icy cold water jolted his system into gear in half a second flat.

 

“What the flying fuck, Chris, you ASSHOLE,” he shouted over the slowly heating water.

 

“I had to get you awake enough to not fall over and crack your head open in the shower somehow. I’m not going to be the one shovelling the grey matter back in if you break your skull, we’re not at neuro-cortial tissue yet.”

 

Jensen let the strong spray of the shower beat down on him for a moment to work past the tremors caused by the cold.

 

“And you put me in here in my boxers, you fucker.”

 

“Ain't interested in your junk, buddy. I don’t play that way, you know that. Next time I’m shoving you in there fully clothed, just for the record.”

 

Jensen scoffed and turned off the water, stepping out to be enveloped in a huge fluffy towel, nose to nose with Chris.

 

“You love me, bitch.”

 

“Don’t get to full of yourself, self-sacrificing prick. One of these days I’m just going to leave you there, drowning in your own drool.”

 

“Wouldn’t.”

 

“Totally would. Now get your ass to bed, I’m not carrying you there, princess.”

 

“Don’t call me princess, hate that.”

 

“I know, go to _sleep_ , Jensen.”

 

The last thing he heard was the emphasis in Chris’ worried mother-hen voice before he went under.

 

Jensen took a deep breath and coughed when the air rasped over his parched throat. He blinked groggily into his dimly lit room and then turned his head to rub his nose into the pillow to see if he could do the elusive sleep thing again, since he’d had approximately a two hour cat nap, and he was going right back under, thank you very much.

 

“There you are, princess, back among the living.”

 

Jensen contemplated pushing his face fully into the pillow and subjecting the mattress to a fist flying temper tantrum for a full second, but he was thirty, and such a thing would be unbecoming. Instead he cracked one eye open to glare at Chris and asked with a hoarse voice:

 

“How l’ng ‘ve I b’n g’n?”

 

Chris raised an eyebrow to indicate how slurry speech was so not funny, but he made a show of looking closely at his watch before he answered.

 

“Way I see it, about… hmm… fifteen hours? Max.”

 

That had Jensen jack-knifing off the bed, only just realizing that he was completely bare under the sheets, but in the adrenaline rush, he was fully prepared to race out to the lab clad in simple linen.

 

“Shit, gotta check up on Jay. Why didn’t you fricking wake me up?”

 

“You looked like you needed, badly. Still do in fact. Hold your horses though, he’s breathing. And how many times do I have to lecture your about giving them names?”

 

“You know that I don’t like to talk to numbers. I’ve just shortened the file designation to sound like more of a person than a piece of military equipment.”

 

“Jensen…”

 

“I know, I know, you keep telling me, and I keep doing it, can we move on? So, he’s breathing? Really?”

 

“Well, it’s not like we can really trust him to do it on his own as long as he’s in an induced coma, but yes, the preliminary readings look surprisingly promising. If he stays as stable as he is right now, we should be able to start on the fracture and the muscle restoration today.”

 

Jensen swung his legs over the edge of the bed and scrubbed his hand through his tousled hair before getting up to dress.

 

“That’s excellent news, I’m going to go in, finish those approximations, and then we get into it. And for the record, I’ll kill you next time you let me stay out for that long in such a crucial period.”

 

“For the record, you maybe the brains of this operation, but there’s capable people on this team that put a lot of money, time and intelligence into their extensive professional education, and you should stop offending them by trying to do everything on your own.”

 

“Chris, I know that…”

 

“Nothing! You overwork yourself like that again, and you might not be at your best when it’s really needed. Which means that first, you’re going to take a shower, then you’re having a healthy breakfast, pardon, early dinner, and _then_ you can go into that lab again; we clear?”

 

Jensen wanted to tell Chris that the times he had to be at his best were all the time, and that he couldn’t ask things of his people that he wasn’t prepared to give himself, but they’d had this discussion so many times that he could play it in his head without even opening his mouth. Jensen would get into a problem and get lost in his work, and Chris would be there to drag him out and make him take care of himself. Didn’t mean that he had to like being kept from the lab any longer than absolutely necessary, but the doe-eyed pout worked on everyone BUT Chris, so he had little choice except to accept his fate and relent.

 

When he was back among the familiar beeps and ticks that made up the sound of his lab, Jensen felt his breath rush out, and the tension in his shoulders ease. It wasn’t that he was particularly keen on not taking care of himself, or that he was completely anti-social, but he was very dedicated to his work and felt most comfortable if he could put his considerable intelligence to work for the well-being of others. He could feel his mental Chris lecturing him about savior-complexes in the back of his head, but that didn’t change the fact that he owed this debt. For the first time in a long while, he didn’t head for the control panel immediately though. Normally, he would do his best to fix whatever was broken, and, while he really didn’t like to think of their patients like impersonal file numbers all the time, there was no particular need to get invested in their persons beyond that. Yet this time, he stepped up to the sturdy plastic barrier that cordoned off part of the lab to create a sterile environment for the treatment. Jensen couldn’t step behind it without suiting up, but even though the material blurred the edges a little, he had a good enough view of the man who was enclosed behind it, tubes and nodes measuring his life in blips and swishes. Maybe it was the way Lieutenant Commander Morgan had made it personal. Maybe it was the very intriguing data he’d received from the first neuronal readings, but had hardly had time to pursue in depth, but Jensen felt a strange pull towards this man. It was nowhere close to actual attraction, or anything, after all he only knew the man’s looks from the scarce photographic evidence in the file – which didn’t really compare to the battered body in that bed five feet away right now. And certainly not due to a sparkling personality since comatose patients were not exactly famous for their stellar conversational skills.

 

“What is it about you, Jay?”

 

His only answer was the steady sound of a heartbeat, and the quiet, timed swish of air pumping in and out. Jensen shook his head and called himself a fool in his mind, turning back to his work table to continue his calibrations. Still, he couldn’t help throwing a glance over his shoulder and wondering.

 

~*~

 

The small space was awash with activity, urgency palpable in the air, and Jensen was right outside, helpless to interfere and wondering where the hell they went wrong.

 

_He remembered falling into the narrow shaft, foolishly falling backwards in play and hitting his head on the rim before he slid down the narrow tunnel, scraping his elbows on the rough wall until he hit the damp ground with a dull thud. He lay there at an awkward angle, feet over his head, and a crick in his neck, not enough space to scramble around and right himself so he could get back out. He was stuck, dizzy, heart racing from the fall, and it was difficult to breathe in the position he was in._

 

“Chris? Chris! Give me a fucking update, what the fuck is wrong in there?”

 

Static crackled over the intercom and Jensen was one second away from barging through the thin plastic walls, protocols be damned, but he had to stay out here to remain in control of running programs.

 

“Everything was working fine and suddenly his vitals went completely haywire… hold, hold that, Christ, keep it stable… Jensen I think… hell, I think he’s waking up.”

 

_It was dark and smelled, and the faster he breathed the harder it was, panic lacing through his mind as he tried futilely to find purchase against the walls closing in on him. Bright spots danced in front of his eyes, and he started fighting the dizziness that threatened to drag him under with all his might._

 

“What? That can’t be, if he wakes up now the shock is going to kill him.”

 

“I know, Jensen, I’m doing my best to keep him from seizing and messing up all the structures, but we can’t just flood his system with sedatives and be done with it. If he doesn’t calm down, we’ll lose him.”

 

Jensen looked blankly at the screens, fingers hovering over the keyboard and brain wiped clean of any coherent thought. When his mouth opened, he startled himself with his own words.

 

“Let me talk to him.”

 

“What? Jensen, you…”

 

“Let. Me. Talk. To. Him. Christian.”

 

_He couldn’t see anything clearly, not the walls, not the light from above that had to be there, shining into the shaft. It wasn’t that deep, he remembered. Something was very wrong, and the fear that gripped his insides wouldn’t even let him call out, so that someone might hear him. Someone had to be there, didn’t they? He hadn’t been playing alone, he knew that. Why was nobody coming to help?_

 

_A voice reached him, muffled as if through layers of cotton._

 

“Can you hear me? You gotta hang in there, _little brother.”_

 

_“Jeff? Are you there?”_

 

“I’m here, I can get you through this, but you have to calm down.”

 

_“But it’s so dark down here, I’m scared!”_

 

“I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to relax, _buddy, so we can get you out of there, alright?”_

 

_“I… I don’t know if I can.”_

 

“Please, if you don’t calm down, we can’t help you. _Just take_ slow, even breaths, and we’ll have you _out of there in no time.”_

 

_“O… okay, I’ll try.”_

 

“That’s it, you’re doing great, just keep breathing slowly, and we’ll have you fixed in no time, alright?”

 

Static crackled back over the line for a second.

 

“Jensen? Jensen, you see this?”

 

“Yeah, I can see it, don’t stand there and gape, get to work NOW.”

 

Jensen sat back in his chair and looked at the screens in amazement. Jay’s vitals were stabilizing, and his body was settling down, so that team could continue their work. He’d never expected it to actually work, but there it was, right before his eyes. Suddenly there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room, and he felt as if the walls were closing in on him. Jensen could barely stay long enough to make sure that the team would be able to continue their work without further interruptions. He gasped a hurried “Gotta go for air” at Chris over the intercom and dashed out of the lab.

 

The ride in the elevator was agonizing. Normally he didn’t have the slightest problem with the enclosed space or the bare walls, but at this moment the tightness and the movement were nauseating. Perspiration sprang up on the skin of his forehead, sweat ran down his back, making his shirt stick uncomfortably to his lower back. He tapped his fingers anxiously against the cool metal of the doors, just stopping himself short of prying them open with his bare hands when the elevator finally reached the surface. Jensen stumbled out into the spacious, shady room of the derelict hangar building that housed the entrance to their facility, but it wasn’t enough. Breath coming out in short gasps, he hurried to the gate and fumbled at the latch with shaky fingers until it gave, and he stumbled out into the baking desert heat. For a moment he just stood there under the bright, open sky he rarely saw anymore, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun with both hands, and wondered why the heck he had just lost his shit big time in there.

 

Jensen lost track of how long he just stood there, bending down to prop his hands on his knees, closing his eyes to just breathe and sort his thoughts out. It could have been anything between thirty seconds and an hour to the moment when he flinched at the screech of the gate and the presence of another person cast a shadow over his head.

 

“What the fuck, Jensen?”

 

He kept his mouth shut in a tight line, ignoring the furious lilt in Chris’s voice and concentrated on breathing, and the way the sun burned the exposed skin of his neck.

 

“Seriously, Jensen, what the fuck did you think?”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“What? Don’t bullshit me, how did you know it would work?”

 

“I _didn’t_ ”

 

He looked up at Chris with a glare that could have cut glass, grateful that he could finally focus his confusion and anxiety onto a target, turning it into a much more clear-cut emotion.

 

“I had NO IDEA, ok? I just went with it.”

 

“Jesus, Jensen you established a rapport down to what, level four, five, and you say you just _went_ with it?”

 

“What you want me to say?”

 

“That you have seen it too.”

 

“I… what? The anomalies? Yes, I’ve fucking seen them and I don’t fucking know what to make of them, is that what you want to hear?”

 

“What I want to hear is that you haven’t done anything stupid.”

 

“What? No, you know that I don’t treat him any different than any other patient we’ve had.”

 

“Do I now?”

 

“Yes, and cut the crap, I don’t know how it happened, it was a spur of the moment thing, but it worked, didn’t it?”

 

“That’s not the point. You can’t just go lone wolf like that, leaving your team in the dark.”

 

“Wait a moment, what are you saying here? Are you implying that I… really, Chris? I didn’t fucking _do_ anything, that’s all _him.”_

 

Chris looked stumped, then intrigued for a moment, and Jensen didn’t really know what to do with the fact that his best friend thought he was so far gone that he’d gone cackling mad scientist behind their backs, but he didn’t really have time to process before Chris pushed on in a completely different direction.

 

“Alright, alright, but that doesn’t explain why you ran out of the building in a full fledged panic attack after your patient just about died. Unless…”

 

“Unless, what?”

 

“Unless you did something _real_ stupid. You get invested, but you don’t get attached. You can save them, but you can’t keep them. That’s the deal, Jensen, you know that.”

 

“I know that, Chris, and I’m _not_ attached.”

 

“Doesn’t look like that to me.”

 

“You know what? Screw you. He’s still alive, and we didn’t completely wreck our work, I count that as a win. I can handle the rest myself, trust me.”

 

“Just see that you do, or you’ll get your ass stuck in some deep shit.”

 

Jensen huffed and scrubbed his hands over his head before turning away and walking back towards the building without another word. Good thing about arguing with Chris was that he’d cleared his head and could get back to work. A thread of unease lingered though and stayed with him the whole day.

 


	3. Chapter Two

Jensen sat before a wide computer screen, chin propped up in his hand while he stared unseeingly at the charts and calculations. He had been doing that for twelve minutes and twenty-five seconds, the slowly ticking clock at the side of his desk the only thing capable of holding his attention for longer than ten seconds at a time. He was still rattled from yesterday’s events, but apart from Chris, the team seemed unaware of anything amiss. He liked to keep it that way, but he couldn’t very well shut his own brain up, and the numbers were just not adding up for the first time. A blinking window on his computer screen caught his eye, indicating an incoming call. With a few keystrokes he accepted, and it took but a second, until the video feed initialized to broadcast a sharp image of Lieutenant Commander JD. Morgan.

 

“Professor Ackles.”

 

“Commander Morgan, is it that time of the month again?”

 

A tentative smile hid in the scruffy beard, but Jensen could see the Commander’s eyes flash with amusement.

 

“I’m afraid so. I’m hoping for good news, Doc, so what can you give me.”

 

“Mixed ones,” Jensen tapped at the keyboard absentmindedly to send off the latest status reports, “we managed to get the internal injuries fixed, and we deemed him stable enough to start on the extensive muscle restoration of the leg yesterday morning. Initially, everything went according to plan, but then there were some complications that resulted in the disruption of the procedure.”

 

Jensen saw Morgan breathe in sharply, so he hurried on.

 

“He was in critical condition, but thankfully we managed to get the situation under control and finish the process without much delay or additional damage.”

 

“So, he’s going to pull through?”

 

“I can’t make any definite guarantees, but the first thirty-six hours are crucial and he responded quite well then. Yesterday’s incident is of course an anomaly we’ll look into, but I’m confident that we’ll be able to handle the further treatment without further such problems. As things are looking now, he’s going to make a full recovery.”

 

This time, Jensen was quite sure that the Commander looked relieved.

 

“Very well then, good job, Doc. And on behalf of my superiors I am to tell you that the board is very interested in the progress of your work and quite satisfied with the achievements of the program.”

 

Jensen grinned.

 

“Is that your courteous way of saying that my funding won’t dry up anytime soon?”

 

“It’s my way of saying that your work has been closely followed, and that your latest case is an exceptional challenge that would be quite an advancement if it turned out to be fully successful. It would open a lot of doors.”

 

“Carrot and stick, eh? I get it. Uhm, Jeff, I…” Jensen hesitated, unsure of whether he should bring it up at all. “I wanted to ask… you know what, never mind.”

 

“You want to ask if I know him.”

 

Jensen stayed quiet, but nodded minutely.

 

“I do. Since he was a kid half the size he’s now. His family lived next door to my house for more than half a decade. I’ve been keeping track of him since he  
joined.”

 

Jensen wondered if Jeff had anything to do with their latest assignment, if he’d called in a personal favor, but it wasn’t his place to ask.

 

“I see. Well, Commander, I hope I can come back with more good news next time.”

 

“I’ve got faith in you, Doc.”

 

Both men hovered for a few seconds in that murky area between dry protocol and informal familiarity, not quite knowing what else to say, before Morgan said good bye and ended the call.

 

0300 hrs LT 07/30/2009

 

Jensen sat in a chair with his head leaning back against the wall, elbow so close to the mattress of the bed beside him that he could feel the fabric of his lab coat brushing against the linen, but that was as close as he ever got. He absently picked at the cuticle of his thumb, hands loosely clasped in his lap and opened his mouth again to say something. He breathed through his nose for a few heartbeats, mouth hanging stupidly open, wracking his brain for something to say before snapping his jaw shut again with a loud click that disturbed the near silence of the lab. He had been doing that more than once over the last month, ever since they had taken down the barrier, sitting here late at night and trying to come up with something to say. Sometimes he had stories to tell, jokes and teasing from shared meals, interesting news from the outside world he rarely ever acknowledged at all anymore, but if you lived in a top secret government facility smack in the middle of three dozen square miles of New Mexican desert 24/7 with the same people around, stories tended to run thin fast. He had thought about just making stuff up as he went, it was not like Jay was likely to notice the difference, but Jensen wasn’t the creative type who could spin fantasy worlds out of fancy words. He was clean cut, physical, scientific and straightforward. The urge to say something anyway, fill the silence with his voice – which was the sole purpose of him being here anyway – drove him to start talking about his work and what they’d actually done. But Jensen had given up on that quickly as well because he felt that if Jay could really hear him, giving him the explanation without the possibility of asking questions in return would be more upsetting than getting the thing over with once he was finally awake.

 

So Jensen sat in mostly in silence, not really uncomfortable, but not really clear on why he couldn’t give up this ridiculous habit. He’d never been one to give much thought to beliefs, spiritual energy or things that happened without any explanation. To him, everything could be explained. It was just a matter of time and place before someone would get to the bottom of things, and he’d done the explaining for a lot of mysterious phenomena in the past, so he should know. Still, after all these weeks he couldn’t fathom how he could have reached Jay and calmed him down like he did, or how he’d found the right words to say at the time. The EEG readings from the incident had been inconclusive, but they had detected some elevated activity in the follow-up, something about Jay’s readings had been off from the start, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Jensen had no way of proving that it was anything like actual awareness. He had no idea whether his presence was even helping the man, but strangely the nightly visits seemed to help Jensen himself, no matter how foolish and short-sighted the endeavor might be. He felt centered, laying his mind to rest for the first time in years, and it was a good feeling. Still, he couldn’t quell the rising worry in the back of his mind that increased with every passing day.

 

They’d taken Jay down from complete life support a week ago, and there hadn’t been any complications. He was breathing on his own, his vitals and neuronal responses were promising and physically, he was in as great a shape as he was ever going to get as long as he remained asleep. He hadn’t woken though, not even stirred or shown any sign of returning to consciousness. Jensen knew these things could take time, the body demanding natural sleep for a while after being subjected to severe trauma, not to mention being suspended in artificial coma for weeks, and not even counting the extensive interference they had to run to trick the human body into accepting the treatment. But the cruelty of waiting for a sign was far worse the hectic energy that buzzed around when people were constantly fighting for a life that hung on a single thread.

 

“Where are you hiding out, hmmm? It’s time to come back now, really, we’re all ready to meet you here, even if it’s just to battle eternal boredom.”

 

Jensen sighed when, of course, there was no answer and decided to stop agonizing over it for tonight. He put his hands on his knees and lifted himself out of the chair with stiff muscles protesting along the way.

 

“Alright, partypooper, I’m going to bed. G’night Jay.”

 

When Jensen left for his room a moment later, he didn’t look back, which was how he missed the fluttery movement, a mere twitch of fingers that bent into the linen blanket before settling again.

 

~*~

 

Incessant beeping in his ear annoyed the crap out of him, because it drilled into his foggy brain at regular intervals, loud… then fainter… like waves crashing to the shore…

 

Nervous energy _buzzing under skin_ , like not moving for days, but at the same time limbs like… asleep, weighted down … concrete…

 

Throat parched… lips chapped, with raspy breath sliding over them… slowly…

 

Eyes open, cracking at the dim room … murky, fuzzy around the edges…

 

Blinking twice, and suddenly the ceiling above him is thrown into such sharp contrast … flinching and an achy feeling settling behind his eyes almost immediately….

 

He blinked more rapidly to dispel the unpleasant sensation, but it was no use. He had muddled through much worse though, and a little bit of a headache wasn’t going to slow him down too much.

 

Looking around, sniffing, listening… had to be in a hospital,… sounds like a duck… complicated machinery surrounding his bed, and the beeping sound finally identified as a heart monitor, slowly picking up the pace now that he was shaking off the drowsiness. Jared wondered how long he’d been here, and whether his stint on the bench had been long enough that his time was already up. Ditching the last two weeks of his tour would totally trump being blown up.

 

Wait.

 

What?

 

_Red. Hot. Pain._

 

Hell flashed through his brain for a moment, and was immediately blanked out by some healthy repression.

 

Couldn’t quite shake off the sense memory of the metallic stench of his blood and the infernal ringing though…

 

With a gasp, Jared surged up and propped himself onto his palms, the sheet slipping down his naked torso to pool around his hips. Frantically, he checked for any recent injuries, but while his skin was littered with scars from cuts and patches of burned tissue fanning out from his right side, the marks looked faded… _years old even_ …. Wherever they had taken him to, the doctors had apparently done a bang up job of patching him up, and he obviously hadn’t been hit as badly as he had anticipated. Just for confirmation, he tried to wriggle his toes, which seemed pretty slow and kind of achy, but at least he felt them, and they obeyed his command. Chances were if that worked, the rest of his legs were attached as well. He resisted the urge to peek under the sheet and check for the junk. Noticed the little patch thingies sticking all over his chest. Jared _hated_ things sticking to his skin. Started peeling at one of them with a fingernail even though he knew he probably shouldn’t. He tried anyway, because the fingers of his left hand bent with the precision and agility of an arthritic octogenarian. He stubbornly made his muscles obey, scratching at the nearest electrode, tugging at the tubes stuck in his arm in the process, hissing at the discomfort.

 

All attention riveted to the right in a fraction of a second. Change of lighting, sound,… doors opening,… muscles bunched and ready… Guy in white coat _doctor_ walking through talking over his shoulder at someone _Chris_  about checking wonky data. Voice deep, booming in his head. Doctor walked further into the room, finally turned around and nearly dropped the tablet pc he’d been tapping away on, face going white from one second to the next as if he’d seen a ghost.

 

“Holy Shit, you’re awake!”

 

Jared wanted to offer him a cheeky smile, wanted to shoot back a witty retort about spectacular greetings, but out came a stifled croak, and his body chose that very moment to inform him that the batteries were empty, and he had no business staying vertical a second longer. Jared had to brace himself on both arms to keep from crashing back onto the mattress, which would probably be very painful. He was shaking badly, muscles trembling from exertion and threatening to buckle under his weight. The doctor saw it and hurried to his side, murmuring under his breath _‘easy, easy there’… ‘you shouldn’t have…’_ as he laid his hand on Jared’s shoulder to support him.  He wanted to scream when his nerves started firing away. It wasn’t pain, not pleasure, not even heat, just an incredibly intense sensation he didn’t have a name for as if his brain had invented a new way to process touch. It was too much, and he lashed out and felt the back of his hand connect with something soft and pliable, heard a faint thud. But exhaustion dragged him under before he could wonder about it, freckles and russet stubble swimming through his mind.

 

~*~

 

Chris came barging into the lab after the sound of a dull thud and a pained shout and raced right into a cacophony of angrily beeping instruments and Jensen in a heap on the floor, sitting on his ass about four feet from the bed with his precious control tablet lying discarded next to him. Chris gave himself a split second to wince at the obviously cracked screen, and the shitstorm Jensen was going to let loose once he noticed, but what worried him a lot more was that Jensen didn’t seem to _have_ noticed yet.

 

Chris kneeled down next to his friend and tried to figure out what had sent the machinery completely haywire, and Jensen stumped into speechlessness.

 

“Jesus, Jensen, what the hell did you do?”

 

Apart from sitting motionless on the floor and staring at the bed as if he’d never seen something like it before, Jensen seemed fine, but Chris noticed with a closer look that the man was holding his ribs with his hand.

 

“Jensen? Jensen! Can you hear me?”

 

Chris tried to get Jensen to respond to see how badly hurt he was, but Jensen only stared over Chris’ shoulder with wide eyes, glasses askew on his face in a way that gave him an endearingly disheveled Professor look, which would have been adorable if he hadn’t looked like he wasn’t quite all there and in his right mind. Finally, Chris managed to attract Jensen’s gaze by snapping his fingers insistently in front of his face.

 

“Jensen, what the fuck happened?”

 

“He’s awake. He’s…”

 

Chris whipped around focusing on the bed in a daze where their patient lay motionless and breathing calmly like he’d done for the past week. Chris wondered if Jensen had tripped and hit his head somewhere along the way, but on second glance he noticed the rumpled sheet and the twisted IV-lines, and he turned back Jensen just as quickly.

 

“You mean _he_ did this?”

 

Jensen frowned in confusion as if he couldn’t quite fathom what Chris was on about before frantically shaking his head and then groaning in pain at the stupid move.

 

“I… he… no, it’s nothing, he was just … awake and sitting up, and then… he caught me by accident, and I just lost my footing and planted myself on my ass like a klutz. I’m fine, I’m… he was awake, Chris!”

 

Jensen looked at Chris as if he’d just found the Holy Grail and all, which made his stomach churn with worry about a completely different issue, but for the moment, he would take Jensen’s word for it and accept the course of events. Still, he had to get his friend out of there and checked out, since he had no way of determining what kind of injuries Jensen had sustained as it was. Chris checked for any serious problem with the equipment, but found that their patient was going to be fine for the moment if he could sleep through the ruckus his disgruntled life support system were beeping up.

 

“Come on, Jensen, up you go. We need to get those ribs looked at and bandaged properly, and you can tell me everything while we do, alright?”

 

He hauled Jensen up by his arm and kept his hand closed tight around the man’s biceps all the way to the infirmary to be able to monitor any shortness of breath the other man might suffer. Jensen kept muttering under his breath the whole way, and Chris really, really didn’t want to think about what kind of trouble Jensen’s latest obsession was going to bring down onto their heads as he set out to patch him up.

 

He managed to get them to the staff medic’s room without further complications. They all were medical professionals in some way or other and knew their way around basic first aid. For that reason, Chris didn’t bother waking Traci, their resident physician, but opted to raid her cabinets and bring her wrath down on him later for messing up her stock. Jensen began to ramble the moment Chris urged him to sit down on the cot.

 

“Like I said, I just went to see what those strange readings were all about – should have noticed instantly that they were inherent activity of a conscious state – and then he just sits there, straight in his bed, PICKING at his electrodes if you can imagine that.”

 

Chris grunted non-committally and ignored Jensen’s hiss when he peeled off his lab coat and shirt.

 

“I mean, he shouldn’t be able to do that, obviously, but you should have seen his coordination, it was awesome. He focused on me immediately, and reacted to my exclamation like he isn’t technically half deaf. It’s like he just does it because he has no idea he’s not supposed to be able to do it. Damn, I’ll say it again if no one else will, I’m fucking amazing at my job… ow, watch the merchandise!”

 

Chris had pinched him in the side to get him back down from his high. It wasn’t that Jensen was really vain or arrogant, just… encouraged by success, and he needed someone to take him down a peg from time to time.

 

“I can’t wait for the physical trial when we can test full functionality. I bet his readings will be through the roof once he’s got full conscious control, although I’m in half a mind to let him run blind for the moment just to see what happens.”

 

He rolled his eyes at Jensen’s enthusiastic planning and then frowned, concerned at the massive bruise that had already spread in colourful layers over Jensen’s lower ribs on his left side. Chris poked and prodded at the contusion, and Jensen bent out of the way instinctively, growling in pain and finally stopping his rant to look down at his torso.

 

“Huh, looks like he got me better than I thought.”

 

“You don’t say? Jensen, seriously, you’ve got to be more careful. You know better than that.”

 

Busying himself with spreading salve on the abused skin first, Chris then went on to bandage the ribs just in case.

 

“It’s my own fault, he was buckling, and I just grabbed reflexively to catch him, but the touch set him off big time. Must be some readjustments to the processing of the neuronal support grid that are in order as soon as he’s up and about again.”

 

Chris just shook his head and ignored Jensen’s cheeky grin that told him how the other man knew exactly what he was going to say next. This dance was so old that they could do it by heart ten times over, ever since Jensen had gotten in trouble the first time. Still, he would have to keep an eye on Jensen in the upcoming weeks. This reeked of a disaster of epic proportions.

 

~*~

 

Jensen had been ecstatic over the fact that Jay had finally woken up, even though that meant they’d have a rocky start, kind of. He berated himself afterwards for not thinking that there might be a problem with sensory transmission, but he had been so caught up in the excitement that he had disregarded all professional reserve. Still, he planned to remedy his faux-pas the minute Jay woke up again; it was a minor issue that was easily fixed with a few adjustments. Chris had made him rest though, go easy on his ribs, which were badly bruised, and for once Jensen had actually felt the need to heed the advice. Besides, there was little chance that Jay would come out of it so fast after he’d exerted himself like that. So why was he lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, thinking of startled hazel eyes (that he’d matched perfectly, mixed all colours) and pale bronze skin with a flutter deep in his stomach?

 

Jensen scrubbed his hands over his face and up into his hair, tangling his fingers in the short strands to tug lightly in frustration. Deep down he knew very well that he wasn’t treating Jay anything like any patient they’d ever had, hadn’t done right from the start. The rational part of his brain was screaming profanities at him for compromising his professional distance like that, and that he didn’t even know what the guy would be like, once he was awake for more than sixty seconds at a time, – not even counting that he was _untouchable_ for like half a million more important reasons – but the rest of him didn’t particularly care. Jensen knew that he’d been down here, holed up away from the world for such a long time now that he was bound snap one way or another, but the direction he was headed was about a continent removed from what he’d expected. Jensen had been prepared to deal with pathological narcissism – ok, not completely off the table, granted –, a god-complex that went off the rails, mad scientist trying to cheat death in a way that went past healing and out the other side.

 

But he had certainly not been prepared for this. Oh, his rational mind recognized the signs sure enough: accelerated heart rate accompanied by quick huffing breaths, heat coiling in his belly, a tingle in his muscles and the thread of the fine sheets rasping against his oversensitive skin. It all bubbled underneath, ready to be acknowledged, and barging past his defences.

 

And then there was his primal self shouting _take,  want,  need_   from the depths of his thoughts where images swirled around to run his own private show.

 

Small grooves in sleep-lax features that promised dimples, which had almost made an appearance on a conscious face in the beginnings of a real smile.

 

Dusky, pebbled nipples _right when his fingertips catch on his own_ smooth expanse of skin, scars faint and faded but proud _brushing over the slight ridge on his hip,_ strong thighs well matched for the long and graceful limbs _dragging his fingernails lightly over the soft skin on the inside of his thigh sending sparks up in front of his eyes, shudder running right up to his spine, heat spreading from his belly._

 

If he kept the sheet in place, kept quiet, hid it from everyone, even from himself, no one had to know, no one would know, would they? No one could.

 

 _Breath hitching as fingertips slide down the crease of his hip, coarse hair and sweat-slick skin tingling with anticipation. Blood rushing in his ears, rushing down, down to where the sensations gather, adding a sting of arousal every time his fingers brush against the base. Can’t keep away, can’t keep his hands off –_ bronze skin, paled by confinement, defined ridges of muscle down to the folds of the sheets – _circle, pull, squeeze lightly, insistently, thumb swiping under the head and up into wetness, ease the way, but not enough, not nearly enough._

 

The harsh, quick breaths hurt his ribs, bone-deep ache spreading, taken as punishment for the transgression, eyes locked onto the ceiling while the images still played, played all the while.

 

_Breathing faster, more erratic, more pressure, more heat, more wet just more, spine arching like a taut bowstring and the hurt settles, right in the middle of pleasure, surging up, sweeping…_

 

Jensen came with a choked scream, biting his lip until the tang of blood welled in his mouth, and he curled on his side with his eyes tightly shut to wall off the last vestiges of the pleasure until it ebbed.

 

“Stupid, stupid, Jensen, fucking stupid.”

 

Sleep was a long time coming after that.


	4. Chapter three

_The landscape was bleak, everything washed grey like desert dusk, but infernal heat still beat down like it was midday, and the sun was in its zenith. Derelict buildings all around, lifeless like the ruins of a city covered in volcanic ash. He lay in a wide open space in the middle, spread-eagled in the searing sun that would burn his skin until it peeled. There was no shade, no protection in the immediate vicinity, and, while his thoughts were sluggish and slow, he still knew that he had to get up, get out of there, find cover and regroup. He had been trained to work past the physical trappings of his body and ignore injury or exhaustion, until he was in a position where he could plan his next move without being interrupted. When he tried to lift his arms to heft himself up, however, he found his left wrist bound to a stake that was rammed in the earth just over his head, coarse rope abrading the heated skin when he tried to tug at it._

 

_His right arm was another matter entirely, he noticed with a kind of stunned detachment. Before he had the chance to move it, it just sank into the ground till up over his elbow, and then there was only packed earth, hard like concrete as if it had never been disturbed, biting into his skin and cutting off the circulation. As he whipped his head around quickly to try and figure out what the hell was going on, the wind picked up and a cloud of dust billowed over his face, making it difficult to breathe. His heart began to race as he choked for air, but even though the dust cleared after a minute, he couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs no matter how hard he tried. Panic made his muscles seize and strain against the trap, but he couldn’t break free. When it first reached his ears, he thought he was imagining things, but he couldn’t ignore the low rumble that ran so deep that he could feel the tremors running through the earth under his back. He frantically looked around and spotted them finally through the last vestiges of the dust cloud – a pack of hounds circling the square, slinking along the buildings in shadows darker than night. Their eyes glowed in a vicious yellow like the desert sun and they were coming close, more confident as he didn’t move that he was trapped, easy prey._

 

_“No, nononono… don’t…”_

 

_The growling didn’t stop, came closer as they still circled out of his range of sight, but he knew, he knew they were coming, coming fast._

 

_The pack pounced from the right, sharp claws and vicious teeth biting into his side and he screamed in terror as they sliced his skin to ribbons, ribs laying open, stark white against the bloody mess of his flesh. Instinctively, he tried to lash out with his legs, but they were on him first, crushing his bones with powerful jaws and presenting him with the horrifying image of mangled muscles while everything else in his body was on fire with fear or pain or shock he couldn’t tell. He couldn’t do anything but watch helplessly, shredding the skin of his wrist on the coarse rope until it was slick with blood and then like a deathblow a haunting screech sounded in the air above his head. He only had a moment before the flap of ebony wings next to his face made him flinch away from the large carrion crow landed right next his head. Vaguely, he sensed the hounds still busy with their gruesome work in the background as he stared frozen into the beady black eyes of the bird that cocked his head and seemed to look back quizzically for a moment as if it couldn’t quite decide what to do next. He had no time to brace himself before it clacked once with his sharp-edged beak and then hacked right down into his left eye._

 

 _His cry of sheer agony bellowed to the outside, into the waking world_ and ripped him right out of sleep, surging up with raging breath, and his heart pounding in heavily in his throat, sweat drenching his whole body.

 

“What the fuck happened to me?”

 

Well, that was what Jared was going for, but it came out more like ‘Wha ‘h f’k h’pp t’ me?’

 

“You shouldn’t try to talk just yet.”

 

The voice out of nowhere made him whip his head around, fists balled and ready, until his eyes settled onto the grave looking man sitting next to the bed holding a little paper cup. Jared realized it was the doctor who had been there when he’d first woken up, blissfully undisturbed by the horrific images that still played before his eyes, and he assured himself that he was back at the hospital, whole and safe, and there was no reason to be upset. That didn’t keep his hands from trembling though, which is why he balled his fists tighter. The doctor offered him the contents of the cup, and Jared nodded, letting the man set the rim on his lips lightly and tip it up with diligence, until a few icy chips slid onto his tongue and soothed his raw throat. He was still shaken up from the terrible nightmare, but Jared couldn’t help noticing that the man’s behaviour towards him seemed… off somehow, gone was the giddy exuberance that had poured off the doctor in waves when he’d first found him awake, replaced by something mellow and reserved. Jared wondered if he’d talked in his sleep, and the doctor was somehow privy to his subconscious terrors. The thought sent a shiver down his spine.

 

Jensen rigorously kept himself from touching Jay – the patient – in any way possible, only giving the cup the slightest tip against the young man’s lips. He told himself that his reserve was entirely due to the issues with the sensory transmission, but if he was quite honest in the back of his own mind, he was terribly embarrassed and felt like his night-time ventures would be written across his face in stark letters if he got too close. Instead he busied himself with the familiar steps of professional evaluation and diagnostic protocol. He lifted the cup from the young man’s lips and set it to the side before retrieving his thankfully repaired control pad. Then he looked up, fully prepared to go the through the routine as fast and clinically as possible, only to meet a pair of guileless and curious eyes, and his resolve flew right out of the window.

 

“Well, it’s good to have you back among the living, finally. I’m Dr. Jensen Ackles by the way, and I’m in charge of your treatment here. Do you feel up some questions and basic diagnostics?”

 

He knew that the goofiest smile stretched his lips when the delivered the quip, but he’d somehow lost control of his features.

 

Jared smiled and nodded, marvelling at the transformation that took place in the doctor’s face when he looked up and a playful smile lit up his features. His voice was deep and pleasant, but his tone made a quiver of anticipation settle in Jared’s belly for some reason. He thought it seemed familiar, though he was sure he had never seen the man before, still it felt… safe and welcoming.

 

“Ye’h,” Jared cleared his throat and tried again, this time his voice came out raspy, but understandable, “Yes, I think I’d be up to that.”

 

The smile broadened in return, and Jared felt himself relax, tension draining from his limbs that he hadn’t even known was there.

 

“That’s great. Like I said, I am personally responsible for your recovery, and my team will continue to monitor your condition. We are very confident that your healing process is going great, so you don’t need to worry. For now I’m just going to ask you a couple of questions and run some small tests. Please, tell me at once if you feel like you need to rest, then we’ll take a break, and I’ll come back later, alright?”

 

Jared nodded and concentrated on Dr. Ackles’ reassuring expression.

 

“Let’s see… upon waking up, yesterday as well as right now, did you have any orientation problems? Dizzy spells, distorted vision, lacking depth perception, vertigo, that sort of thing?”

 

Jared shook his head.

 

“No, I mean, things were a little blurry at the beginning, but I blinked, and everything turned as sharp as it’s ever been.”

 

Dr. Ackles tapped away on his pad with a little frown and nodded absentmindedly. He grabbed a little light pen and shone into Jared’s eyes with it. The bright light was uncomfortable, but the doctor seemed satisfied with Jared’s reactions.

 

“That looks good, now anything with other sensory perception? I don’t think you have any difficulties following my speech, so I’m assuming your hearing is satisfactory.” When Jared nodded, he went on,” problems with itchy skin, feverish feelings or numbness?”

 

“Well, I feel like I have a very bad case of sore muscles involving my whole body, and my left arm was very difficult to coordinate yesterday, but I managed to wriggle my toes and all, which calmed me down a lot, I can tell you.”

 

“So you have both sensory perception and motor control over the extremities, that’s very good, and very little muscle atrophy which is excellent. Once we’ve cleared you for exercise you will of course have to start training again to get back to your original shape and adjust, but I’m sure that we will have you back on your feet in no time. Now, I have one small test left, for which I need to place this little device behind your ear for a moment, are you ok with that?”

 

The doctor produced a little button shaped thing that looked a little like bug and made Jared wonder just what kind of super-advanced hospital he’d landed himself in that had this sort of diagnostic technology. He nodded anyway, and the doctor reached out to put the device right against the skin behind his ear.

 

“This is going to sting a little for just a moment.”

 

A jolt went through his head, and Jared flinched, it didn’t really hurt, more like getting zapped after you’d rubbed some static electricity into your clothes.

 

“Everything alright?”

 

There was that smile again, and Jared felt the flutter in his stomach increase, mortified when his cheeks started to heat up as he answered.

 

“Yeah, fine.”

 

Dr. Ackles nodded and started tapping away again on his tablet pc.

 

“Now, tell me if you feel anything out of the ordinary and try to describe it as accurately as possible.”

 

Jared wanted to open his mouth and tell the doctor that he felt completely fine, when it suddenly started.

 

“Wait, there’s a tingle in my fingertips.”

 

“Painful, or…?”

 

“No, no, just… like they’d fallen asleep, and the blood is rushing back.”

 

“Hmhhhmm, alright, the same in both hands?”

 

“Yes, what… wait, now it’s in my toes… hey, are you _tickling me?”_

 

Dr. Ackles chuckled and bent a little lower over the screen on his knees.

 

“No, just checking up on your sensory responses.”

 

Suddenly he reached out and put his hand on Jared’s shoulder.

 

“Is this uncomfortable in any way?”

 

Jared could feel the soft pads of the doctor’s fingers pressing lightly into his skin, warmth seeping down through his palm, and his breath caught in his throat as he glanced down, completely bewildered for a moment.

 

“I… uhm, yes it’s… it’s fine.”

 

He looked up again, noticing that Dr. Ackles had kept his hand where it was a lot longer than was strictly necessary for a simple test, and once their eyes locked. The doctor seemed to notice as well, blushing a little under Jared’s inquiring gaze. To his credit though, he didn’t snatch his hand away, but lifted it calmly, like nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

 

“I’m just going to run the data through our system and let you get some rest.”

 

“Wait, I… aren’t you going to tell me about what happened to me?”

 

The memory was hazy in Jared’s mind, buried somewhere between nightmarish visions and blank, grey denial, but he knew that he needed to know the truth.

 

Jensen looked down onto the hand on his arm, barely keeping a flinch in check at the unconsciously strong grip. He was truly amazed at Jay’s ability to control the newly operating systems so seamlessly, even though the strength was somewhat unexpected. Normally, their patients needed a few days at least to adjust and get that kind of dexterity back that Jay seemed to have acquired in mere minutes after waking up. When he had told Chris about the events the day before, he had barely had the words to describe what had happened much less think about what it had _meant,_ and he knew that Chris had probably thought he was exaggerating in his excitement. But now that he had the physical evidence in plain sight, his brain finally decided to kick into gear and pick up on something that he should have pieced together already, but which had been buried under stress and his tangled mess of emotions.

 

Now it hit him like a ton of bricks.

 

Jay shouldn’t be _able_ to do what he did.

 

Jensen looked up to meet Jay’s apprehensive eyes and realized that he’d been standing there, lost in his own thoughts without ever answering the question.

 

“I’m sorry, I just… of course, I’ll explain everything to you, I just have to… go now, check up on something.”

 

“Is that… did something happen?”

 

The fingers around Jensen’s wrist tightened a little before the pressure let up, but suddenly, the touch burned into his skin.

 

“No, nothing to worry about, just… I realized something. I need to… I’ll right back, I swear.”

 

Jared wondered at the abrupt exit of the doctor, but he had said that it was nothing worrisome, and he believed the man, since he’d looked more excited than upset. Still, something was definitely off here, and it was not only that half a dozen plasma flat-screens for monitoring and diagnostic microcomputers were definitely not your run-of-the-mill medical equipment even in military hospitals. Plus, they sure as hell normally didn’t have doctors who were that kind of hot, but Jared was willing to concede that this point was not quite statistically conclusive and shouldn’t get him sidetracked. He wasn’t some kind of conspiracy buff or anything – that was Chad’s pet peeve –, but even in his unit there had been many a joke about all kinds of crazy programs the government funded for their military campaigns. He had the ominous feeling that he’d come out of Dodge in a much worse shape than it appeared right now and landed himself in some top secret underground bunker, where they’d used some highly experimental, probably halfway illegal procedures to put the pieces back together. Suddenly, Jared was almost afraid to ask again where he was, how long he’d been here, and what exactly had happened to him. Then he examined his own thoughts for a moment and laughed at himself for being so paranoid that his inner Chad had riled him up like that… which was of course when the weird shit actually started.

 

Jensen hurried outside to the big control center of the lab while numbers and images and codes danced a jig in his head, piecing a picture together that he couldn’t believe he’d missed up to now. When he slid the control pad into the slight depression that made up the interface to the big servers, his hands shook from barely contained excitement. He absently opened a communications channel to Chris in the research labs while simultaneously calling up Jay’s complete records.

 

He started babbling away the second Chris answered the call:

 

“Chris, you’ve GOT to come see this _right now.”_

 

<“Jensen, what’s up, did something happen? Are you alright?”>

 

“I need you here yesterday, and I’m perfectly fine, better than that in fact if my findings prove to be correct. I talked to Jay, ran some sensory diagnostics and…”

 

<”Wait, WHAT? He’s awake again? Jensen, I told you to call immediately and not to handle him all on your own again.”>

 

“Chris, I can handle myself perfectly well without your pretentious mother-henning, so spare me and get your ass down here pronto, so I can show you what I found!”

 

<”I know you can handle yourself, Jensen, but I still want you to be careful to avoid a repeat of…> yesterday, jackass”, Chris answered as he stepped through the door and shut off his headpiece. “So, what’s got your panties in a twist, Princess?”

 

Jensen scowled darkly at the nickname, but he was too absorbed in the analysis of the data on screen to meet Chris with a proper response.

 

“I just figured out something that’s been missing in our diagnostic profile the whole time. Remember the incident during the muscle restoration procedure, and how we couldn’t make sense of how he would manage to wake halfway up under such heavy medication and all? Well, I think his brain has been outsmarting us, working through the back door.”

 

Jensen brought up all the data sheets with the EEG readings in question for Chris to take a closer look, while he searched for more clues to support his theory.

 

“I thought something about his readings was odd the whole time, but I couldn’t make head or tail of it, because I was looking in completely the wrong direction, but Chris, he just grabbed my wrist in there with his _right hand_. His fine motor skills are extremely precise, and the strength of his grip was…”

 

Chris looked stormily at the data spread on the screens.

 

“But Jensen, that’s not possible, the readings must have been messed up somehow…”

 

“No, I’m telling you, it’s not a fluke. And look what I got off the neuronal interface just now, when I did the sensory adjustment tests, you’re… this is so big I tell you…”

 

Jensen pulled up the data for the neuronal interface that connected all the new subsystems to the central nervous system and made it possible for them to  
interact with the body like they belonged. The readings told him exactly what he had expected, but he waited for Chris to come to the same conclusion first. A sharp intake of breath told him that Chris had found precisely what he’d just seen with his own two eyes in the numbers.

 

“But that’s not possible, how can he…?”

 

“He’s accessing the mainframe.”

 

“Again, Jensen, how would he do that? The system’s not designed for active operation, he couldn’t…”

 

“Of course it’s not active operation, he doesn’t even know that he’s got a micro-computing system in the back of his skull; it’s _subconscious_ control.”

 

“You’re kidding, right? No way his brain is treating an artificial subsidiary like an actual part of his nervous system.”

 

“I think – and you need to agree that the readings support the theory – that this is exactly what he’s doing. Somehow his brain is processing the raw data of the system like it is legitimate sensory input, and, what’s more, I think the same is true for motor output. He might even be able to reach a performance way above a hundred and ten percent of original capacity, and all this without a noticeable adjustment period. This is _huge,_ Chris!”

 

Chris was still standing in front of the screens with his arms crossed defiantly, but even he couldn’t deny the hard evidence of the data in front of them, and from the gleam in his wide eyes, Jensen knew that he would only take a couple of minutes of in depth analysis to get on board the way Jensen already was. He didn’t get a chance to revel in this break-through, because suddenly all systems went on alert, with some major distress signals coming from their patient down in the lab.

 

Ever since the doctor had left, Jared had noticed a slight ache radiating from the back of his neck, but during his musings he had dismissed it as some residual discomfort. Now though, it suddenly bloomed up into his head, a sharp stab that concentrated primarily behind his left eye. Jared groaned slightly and leaned back, pressing his eyes shut and massaging the bridge of his nose with his fingers, in the slim hope of alleviating the pain a little. He wondered if Dr. Ackles would be able to hear him if he called out, or if there was some kind of emergency button, but before he could bring himself to open his eyes to look around, a high pitched whine started in his ear, drilling agony into his skull. It felt for a moment like his brain was going to melt and leak out of his ears, but from one second to the next, the pain was just … gone, and all the sounds around him seemed normal. Jared took a relieved breath and opened his eyes to see whether he could well… see.

 

What he got was… surreal.

 

He had hardly opened his eyes when something that felt like a camera flare distorted his vision, and suddenly everything in front of him went two shades darker, more contrasted and strangely digital. Numbers started to swirl through his line of sight that he couldn’t really make sense of, except that they appeared to be measurements of some kind, calculations of the perimeter environment. It looked like two different perceptions of his field of vision one overlaid above the other, and it was disorienting and frightening as fuck. Jared felt the first tendrils of panic creeping up his spine, heart beating frantically, and breath going fast, and now he wanted to know what the fuck they had done to him here right this instant. He felt like he was wearing glasses with holographic projections that belonged strictly on the sci-fi section of the movie shelves and not inside his _head._

 

The big shock however, came when he stopped looking around himself and tried to concentrate on something closer, catching sight of his right hand that was clenched in the bed sheets out of the corner of his eyes. He lifted his hand in front of his and watched in horror as the image was virtually peeled back like a floor plan, skin, muscle, sinew and bone, only it wasn’t right, it was something metallic, or… fluorescent blue particles moving in the veins with rapid speed, and… someone was screaming, and it boomed in his ears with the strength of a jet lifting off next to his head, and something was wrong, wrong, wrong… He heard footsteps, and suddenly there was the face of a man in front of him, complete with figures about his height, proximity, threat assessment, and he couldn’t… couldn’t look, so he lashed out, flesh _something else, something_ connecting with flesh, and resounding crash, and the man was gone, but the images still weren’t, and Jared couldn’t… breathe. It was … then there was a sound, a groan that resounded in his addled brain, and suddenly, _Jay,_ everything was, _Jay, you’ve got to,_ focused on that sound, that… _voice,… just listen,… you’ve got to calm down._

 

And everything ground to halt, like it went from sixty to zero in a heartbeat, and there was a prick in his neck, and cold, black darkness spread all over.

 

Chris barely took his time to slide the needle safely out of their patient’s neck and lower him back to the bed before he dropped everything on a tray and sprinted around the bed to where Jensen was lying dazed on the floor among the remnants of half of their monitoring equipment.

“Jensen, are you alright? Fuck, man, you’ve got to _stop_ doing that.”

 

Jensen blinked up at him through the blood running into his eye from a cut above his brow. Chris noticed his careful, shallow breathing instantly, and cursed at the thought of the ribs. He decided to keep Jensen where he was for the moment, until Traci arrived to look him over, while the rest of the team rushed in, roused by the amber alert and flocked around the bed. Chris barely had the presence of mind to brief them on the most important facts and kept Jensen lying down until Traci had examined him and pronounced him fit to walk the short distance to the staff medical center on his own feet. He supported Jensen until he could leave him safely on the cot with Traci to do the patching up and then left reluctantly to go back and organize this incredible mess their latest case had turned into just now.

 

Jensen groaned pitifully when Traci bandaged his ribs with the relentless practicality of an experienced physician. She’d already pronounced a couple of them cracked and a few more severely bruised, but there was not much else she could do for the moment besides order him to rest. She pointedly didn’t ask him about the older bruises, but he knew that if something else happened, she’d confront him anyway. The stitches in his brow pulled slightly with every frown.

 

“You’re lucky that I know how to do stitches right from my stint as a plastic surgeon. Fear not, your eternal beauty will be preserved. Well… until you’re old and wrinkly and your skin gets floppy at the edges and all that. But since the world is unfair, and you probably have all the _really_ good genes, you won’t be worrying about that for a loooong time.”

 

Jensen grinned at her despite himself.

 

“You always give out the most extraordinary compliments, you know that?”

 

Traci rolled her eyes before she answered:

 

“You would be the one man to appreciate my candour, why oh why couldn’t it be one that’d actually _take_ me if I offered? But now, no more diversionary tactics, you mind telling me what’s up with the Hulk down the hall?”

 

The casual nickname made Jensen sputter, then wheeze and lie back, groaning from the pain.

 

“You… You can’t call him that.”

 

Traci shrugged, completely unfazed.

 

“Just because you are completely unimaginative and give them names based on their files of all things doesn’t mean that other people can’t use comic book heroes. And you have to admit from the way he looks and the way _you_ look that it’s a pretty damn fitting description.”

 

Jensen stared at her incredulously for a moment, but then he just shook his head slightly and prayed for acceptance.

 

“It’s not his fault. I can’t exactly say what happened to rile him up so badly, but if what I just found out is true, then it would have been pretty damn scary, especially if he had no idea what he was dealing with. If I’m right, this case might speed up our prospective research plan by _years._ I have to find out what happened as soon as he wakes up again.”

 

“What you need to do is keep yourself out of harm’s way for the next few weeks until those ribs are healed and rest up for a bit. Chris is more than capable of keeping the ball rolling for a day or two.”

 

“But I…”

 

“No discussion about this, Jensen. I’m serious. You need give yourself some time before you jump back into the fray. I get that you’re excited about these new developments and all, but that doesn’t change that you’re just human, like the rest of us. You need to take a break.”

 

Jensen sighed, chastised, but he couldn’t very well argue with Traci’s logic. Besides, Jay was sedated for the moment, and it would take some time for him to wake up again anyways. He decided to give in for now and get some sleep. There were a whole lot of problems that was still going to be waiting for him once he woke up.

 

“Alright, alright, I give. I can’t do anything right now anyway. But I’m not taking a vacation, just so you know. I know you all like to pamper me and all that, but I’m responsible for what happens to this man, and I need to find out what exactly we’re dealing with.”

 

Traci sighed dramatically for a moment, but obviously decided to take what she could get.

 

“I know I can’t keep you away for long, just get one good night’s sleep at least and be sure to take the meds that I left on your bedside table, are we clear? And we’re talking about what needs to be done for those ribs soon.”

 

She threw him a stern look, but he nodded obediently, trying to ignore his smarting ribs as he drifted off to sleep.


	5. Chapter four

Jared drew a sharp breath, thrown into awareness from one second to the next even if the clingy webs of forced relaxation still clung to his muscles like molasses. For that very moment, everything hung in balance and he wondered how long he’d been gone this time since the weight dragging down his limbs still felt so heavy even though his mind was wide awake. It wouldn’t have been as long as the first time though, which had been long enough to get some of his _extremities_ replaced apparently and that thought made a cascade of images shudder down in front of his mind’s eye, everything distorted and out of place and _unbelievable, what the flying fuck had they done to him?_

 

The thundering beat of his heart rushed in his ears, strong and steady despite the panic rising inside, choking him up as he wondered just how much of him was still _him_ after all. Suddenly the walls felt like they were moving in around him, and the quiet, incessant beeping of the machine attached to his body roared like a cacophony of madness around him. He needed to get out, fricking out of here and fast. And then Jared beat his protesting, drug-sluggish muscles into submission by sheer power of will, and got his legs to move, sliding down from the side of the bed with a dull thud. Setting his bare feet down onto the ground felt like walking on a live wire, as if a million nerve endings lit up at the same time and he barely stifled a scream. Still, Jared breathed past the sensation that was almost but not quite like pain and levered himself up to stand on his own two feet, shaky and unstable like a newborn colt, but upright and prepared to shake the tangles of his mechanical guardians loose and run as far as he possibly could.

 

Jensen let himself get dragged out of sleep reluctantly, aches and cramped muscles, and then the nature of the alarm penetrated his mind, and he was up in a flash, every personal consideration forgotten. He barely took the time to throw a random lab coat over his bare, bandaged chest, and the loose sweat pants before he ran out toward the lab like the fiends of hell were on his heels, the ringing of a flatline roaring in his ears. He was one of the first people to arrive besides the night guard, barely aware of the people pouring in after him, but when Jensen barrelled through the doors of the lab, half out of his mind when he went through the identification to open the lock, he found quite a different situation than what he’d expecting. Instead of lying in the bed with cardiac arrest, Jay had obviously stripped off all the monitoring equipment attached to his body and was standing next to the bed on quite unsteady legs, but obviously determined to up and leave on his own recognizance.

 

“I’m sorry, but you can’t just pull of the equipment like tha…”

 

“Watch me.”

 

“What’s going on here?”

 

The lab-tech who had been on watch duty for the night shot Jensen a desperately grateful look when he hastened up them, staying still and indecisive like a hunter who unexpectedly finds the wild boar he’s been tracking turning around and panting an couple of feet from his position. Jensen had no idea how people supposed that he’d have a better chance at getting Jay to budge if he didn’t want to – the guy was built like a fricking redwood even without the extras, no kidding – but he was the team leader and in a position of authority. Technically.

 

That didn’t mean that he didn’t feel entirely the same way about the stand-off he had run into headfirst just now. What he knew for sure was that he couldn’t let the situation escalate like it had last time to the point of having Jay medically subdued again, not before he’d found out what had actually triggered the major episode from before. That didn’t mean that all the other people in the room were with the program though. Especially since the bottom kind of fell out of Jensen’s stomach for a multitude of reasons when Jay looked up and focused all his attention on him, eyes blazing with a simmering fury.

 

“ _You.”_

 

Jensen’s breath caught in his throat, apprehension rising in him when Jay advanced on him with a looming presence he seriously shouldn’t be able to pull off just like that. Still, he had to man up and get this mess under control fast.

 

“I need you to get back onto the bed and let me reset your monitoring systems, now.”

 

Jensen fancied that he saw a minute flinch at the harsh sound of his voice, but the instruction didn’t stop Jay in his tracks for more than a split second, on the contrary, it seemed to make him even madder. He advanced on Jensen with a fervor that made him take an involuntary step back, even though he mentally berated himself for it on the spot.

 

“I don’t think so. I think that you and me, we have some things to talk about and then I’m going to go discharge myself.”

 

“I can’t do that, there’s too many…”

 

“The hell you can’t. As far as I can tell you’ve made me fit to walk through a wall, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do if you want to make that bet.”

 

Jensen opened his mouth to come up with some kind of rebuke, but before he had the chance to say anything, Jay’s right hand closed around his neck like a vice and lifted him clear off the floor. Fighting for breath all of a sudden, he barely had time to register Jay’s hissed words:

 

“And don’t think I’m dumb enough to let your underlings get the drop on me again. That’s right, shorty, I see you there creeping in. Here’s what’s going to happen: you put that syringe down and gather up everyone in this room, and then you get out of here and close the door. And don’t even think of calling the cavalry, because I’m quite easily distracted right now, and if I’m startled I might forget myself and grip a little harder than I actually intend to.”

 

Everything hung in stasis for a moment as Jensen scrambled against the tight grip, realizing for the first time that Jay wasn’t only his patient and possibly the key to an extraordinary scientific break-through, but also a highly trained soldier and a very dangerous man. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the thrill that raced through him at the feel of the inhumanly strong fingers closing around his neck, and the agony his abused ribs inflicted on him with his troubled breathing.

 

“Didn’t you hear me? You don’t get the fuck out of here right now, he dies. Don’t try my patience.”

 

When Jensen opened his eyes again, he saw Chris in his line of sight and tried to convey to him with a minute nod and the expression of his face that he was alright and could handle himself. Chris hesitated of course, unwilling to abandon him in this unpredictable and unstable situation, but Jensen’s pained gasp from a slight increase of pressure finally made him move as well. When the swish of the doors sounded behind his back and Jensen heard the security system engage to lock up the lab, he made himself meet Jay’s stare head on. This was just between them right now.

 

When he was sure that everyone had actually left, and they’d locked up the place after themselves, Jared finally allowed himself to relax for a second. This situation had spiralled out of control so fast that it was giving him whiplash, but he wasn’t going to back down anymore. Still, the moment of silence and receding tension made him actually realize that he was dangling a man from his neck with his feet three inches into the air, and it was as much like a punch in the gut as his ultra vision had been the night before.

 

“Oh shit, I didn’t…”

 

Abruptly, he let go, and the doctor landed on unsteady feet, clutching an arm around his torso as he stumbled, and Jared wondered for a fleeting moment… but determination and rage clouded his mind to anything but what he wanted to know. The doctor looked up to him, wheezing for breath and set out to say something.

 

“Jay, I’m sorry for…”

 

“I don’t want to hear any of your fucking excuses. What I want is for you to tell me what exactly happened to me out there in the desert, and what you did to me, and I want it right the fuck now.”

 

Despite the fact that he’d let the man down so he could talk, Jared still advanced with heavy steps, crowding the slightly smaller man back with all the intimidation he could muster.

 

“You… uhm, you were brought here with polytraumatic injuries, in severe haemodynamic shock due to massive blood loss sustained in the initial trauma. There was an acute problem with pulmonary decompensation due to a lung artery embolism with necrotic lung tissue caused by metallic shrapnel perforation during transport. Additionally, internal injuries entailed grade III haemorrhagic renal failure, with hyperpotassimia and billirubinaemia, which resulted in cardial discompensation with absolute arrhythmia…” Jensen was babbling like a loon, and he knew it, especially since Jay was unlikely to get half the medical mumbo-jumbo, but putting diagnostics together like that had always calmed him down in stressful times, and his mouth was just running away with him at the moment.

 

“…while the extremities presented a particular challenge with a grade III open comminuted fracture of the femur with rupture trauma to the abductor group and the patellar tendon, as well as spontaneous supracondylar humeral amputation, due to disruption trauma. The most tricky parts were the head trauma where we could observe a penetration trauma of the bulbus of an eye with retinal dislocation, and tympanic pressure trauma with dislocation of the stapes in one ear. To save your life, we were given directive to apply a highly advanced, experimental procedure combining nano- and microrobotics with biocompatible polymer structures, artificially developed biointrinsic neuronal support structures for vital enhancement and replacement systems of the human body.”

 

Jay looked at him incredulously for a moment, but then his gaze darkened again and he crowded them into the wall, planting his hand firmly next to Jensen’s head and leaning in closely. Jensen felt his breath brush over his cheek, shivering with something between panic and arousal at the sensation while he followed Jay’s eyes flitting over his face, assessing – he felt weighted, measured and found wanting in a way he had never experienced before.

 

“Are you trying to make me madder?”

 

Jensen stared back into those vivid eyes just a couple of inches from his own, the right one just a little bit off in colour, too luminous, the fraction of a second too fast when focusing, an imitation of life. He managed to shake his head slightly, not daring to break contact on his own.

 

“ _Try. Again.”_

 

Jensen bit his lips slightly, wetting them in an attempt to find enough of a distraction to order his thoughts, noticing the way Jay’s eyes followed the movement for a split second before focusing up again. The tension between them suddenly felt fundamentally altered, but Jensen couldn’t really make sense of the why and how. Still, Jensen started talking quietly, almost a whisper, trying to keep Jay near, make him understand.

 

“When they brought you here, you were in bad shape. They’d barely managed to keep you alive during transport. The shell that exploded next to you blasted shrapnel into just about every part of your body, causing grievous internal injuries in addition to the damage from the initial explosion. When you arrived here, one of the metal pieces had worked itself up into your chest cavity and pierced one of your lungs, deflating it, flooding it with blood.”

 

Jensen lifted his hand in a moment of temporary insanity and stretched his shaking fingers until they made contact with Jay’s flushed skin, healed almost seamlessly where there should have been raised and knotted scars. The muscles jumped under his touch, and Jay’s eyes widened minutely, but Jensen never let his gaze waver, never stopped talking as his fingers slid feather-light over the pebbled skin.

 

“We had to replace it so that you’d be able to breathe again, and we could gain time to work on your failing kidneys and heart, which couldn’t take the strain of blood loss combined with the traumatic injuries anymore. We were able to save one of the kidneys and outfit your heart with a compatible support structure that helps the muscle do its work and compensates for any extra capacity that the other systems need.”

 

Jensen’s finger tips slid up over the left pectoral muscle, pressing down slightly until the strong, regular beat travelled up through his skin and into his core like an electrical shock, words suddenly fleeting and secondary to the strange spark between them, yet he went on, almost whispering.

 

“When we got the internal injuries under control, we set the shattered bones in your leg, and repaired the muscle damage and the shredded ligaments so that you’re able to walk again, almost lost you again then and there, no idea why we didn’t.”

 

He inched his hand a little higher again, light brushes as if to calm a skittish animal even though he knew that if he broke the spell with one foolish move, it would be his hide.

 

Still, a shiver ran down Jensen’s spine, the whisper of a thrill that captured a feeling that had nothing to do with fear and everything with intuition.

 

“Next was your right arm, which was torn off above the elbow in the initial blast, so I had to design a full scale replacement according to your records and proportions. And last, the replacement of your shredded eardrum, and the reconstruction of your left eye, which was pierced by a piece of shrapnel.”

 

His fingers had made their way up to Jay’s cheek, the lightest of touches against the thin, sensitive skin at the corner of his eye. Jensen watched everything sink in, realization dawning slowly, followed by awe, and dread and downright terror. Whispered words that were barely loud enough to reach Jensen’s ears.

 

“What have you done to me?”

 

Jensen looked at him for a heartbeat, so close that their breaths mingled, before tilting his head up and answering, “I brought you to life.”

 

Then he leaned in across that last inch, eyes sliding shut while the soft brush of lips, shuddering breath on heated skin made the world grind to halt around him.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

 

Jared was paralysed by shock, words crashing into him along with sensations that didn’t make the slightest bit of sense. Like the soft press of lips on his, chaste, no more than a fleeting touch, but yet so out of the blue, completely ridiculous in their current position that it left him speechless. A deep smothering ache settled underneath his breastbone, spreading out in an agonizing sense of loss. He found himself trying to keep his body in check, holding back from chasing after the kiss for another one when they separated with the next exhale of breath.

 

Somewhere deep, deep down a portion of his mind was sitting back with hysterical laughter about the irony of it all, all the anger and fear, bleak emotional exhaustion and the overpowering need to feel close to another human being that he hadn’t experienced in years. For a moment, he could do nothing but breathe through the turmoil, trying to come to terms with the fact that he was only half there anymore, but still kicking, still wanting… wanting…

 

“Jay?”

 

His heart did a curious little hiccup at the sound of the word, missing a beat, before it started again at a much faster pace. He looked down at his chest as if he was trying to look directly at it through skin and flesh and bone, feeling his heartbeat pump blood through his veins like an echo inside his body, something foreign and unnatural crawling under his skin, and suddenly the rage was back.

 

His hand snapped up as an afterthought, curling his fingers tight around the hand on his face, grinding the delicate bones of the wrist together, until he felt a spasm of pain that put distance between them. Looming over the wide-eyed doctor, Jared took in the sharp, shallow breaths, sweat beading on the split brow that seeped into the blood crusted strips of skin and tried to figure out what this man’s agenda was. He couldn’t really get past the one consuming thought in his mind.

 

“You made a monster out of me.”

 

The words punched all the air right out of Jensen’s lungs, not only because of their meaning, but also the vitriol with which they were uttered. He didn’t really know what to do with the hatred that began to gather in Jay’s eyes. He was still reeling from his unbelievable feat of stupidity of a minute ago, but the words ripped a wound in a place inside him that he hadn’t thought could be touched.

 

Shouldn’t have been touched, given there was nothing between them to build his feelings on but the illusion of a person and wishful thinking.

 

That didn’t change the fact though that he felt unable to breathe.

 

That he felt locked inside this impossible situation with no way out, pinned by a searching stare that seemed to be able to figure him out as little as he could the other way around.

 

Before he could even begin to make head or tail of it though, his eyes caught on the red dot that slid over the skin on Jay’s temple with only a split second to  process what was happening, realization racing through him almost as fast as a gunshot, but the instinctive reaction of his body seemed to have been enough to alert Jay.

 

Jared probably would have missed it if not for his whole attention being concentrated on the man in front of him. The minute twitch of the doctor’s eyes to the side, and the tension that suddenly seemed to lock all the muscles in his body. And then it was there, loud in his ears, but familiar, because he had done it often enough himself, the click and flip of a bullet sliding into the chamber, scraping at the walls, and he was moving before the pull of the trigger was complete. Jared ignored the painful, deafening noise of the discharged bullet and the beginning of a fearful scream, because only his response time stood between him and certain death at that moment.

 

Jensen screamed when he witnessed the bullet speeding past Jay’s head, ruffling his hair, but instinct, or adrenaline or sheer madness made him use the taller man’s momentum to spin them around, until his body was between Jay and the tac team that had obviously crept into the lab while they had been busy hashing it out amongst themselves. He was terrifyingly conscious of the half a dozen laser beams that were most likely trained on his back, waiting for a clear shot. His heartbeat thundered in his ears while he tried to figure out how to dissolve that situation without anyone dying. He needed a second to _think._

 

“HOLD YOUR FIRE.”

 

To Jay, who was crouching just a couple of feet away he whispered ‘stay down’ and when the man made a move to case the surroundings and maybe make a run for it, he hissed desperately: “They got a _kill order_ on you, so stay the fuck down, and do exactly as I say.”

 

“Prof. Ackles, you’re going to need to step away immediately.”

 

“I said, _hold your fire_.”

 

“I’m afraid we can’t do that, we have amber alert and authorization to immediately terminate the subject.” The unspoken question about why Jensen had put himself in the line of fire when _he_ was supposed to be in grave danger was hanging heavy in the air.

 

“Look, I’m going to turn around slowly, and then we can talk about this face to face, alright, Major Lehne?”

 

“That’s not…”

 

Jensen send Jay another look that hopefully conveyed how much he needed him to stay put right now, before turning around with his hands spread open to the side.

 

Jared felt his blood rush through his veins, and his heart thundered in his ears so loudly that he didn’t even hear what was said once the doctor had turned his back to talk to the soldiers surrounding them. Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, he had just dodged a bullet. _Literally._

 

All thoughts ground to halt around him, centred on that one, mind boggling fact, stopping the emotional rollercoaster he’d found himself on since he woke up dead in his tracks. The ache was creeping back into his head slowly, and he knew that it was only a matter of seconds before his world tilted again into that strange perception that made his whole body feel unfamiliar to him, fragmented, _alien._

 

He fought against the sensation with everything in him, eyes squeezed shut, nostrils flaring, but it didn’t help, only made his hearing more acute _“Major I can assure you that the subject is contained…”_ and he wanted to slap his hands over his ears, drown it out, drown it all out…

 

“MAKE IT STOP”

 

The scream rang in Jensen’s ears and stopped the words that he’d prepared to say dead, before they could leave his lips. He could practically feel the laser-beams that were still trained on his body quiver, and he thanked all the gods who were listening that none of Alpha response team had a happy trigger finger. His first instinct was to turn around and take care of his patient, but he couldn’t do that before he was sure that team would actually stand down if he did. Major Lehne was a loyal and seasoned officer, and, baring a few minor incidents, Jensen hadn’t needed his immediate assistance till now, but he knew that the man was determined to follow his orders, no matter what the cost might be. However, even he and his men weren’t immune to witnessing a comrade’s distress, and when Jensen saw a glimpse of compassion and conflict in their eyes, he knew he had to take his chance now or never.

 

“Major, I’m going to need you and your men to help me get him back into bed and set up the monitoring equipment.”

 

Jensen had used his best commanding authority voice, before he resolutely turned around and finally got a read on what state Jay was in, and what had prompted the sudden outburst. He had his suspicions, but finding the man with his hands pressed against his ears and tangled into his hair, eyes racing erratically under the closed lids like he was in REM, but breathing harshly and labored, still hit him like a punch in the gut. When he laid his hands on Jay’s shoulders however, the man’s eyes suddenly opened and fixed him with the most disconcerting stare Jensen had ever encountered. The pupil of the undamaged eye was blown wide and unseeing, while the iris of the other one was so prominent that Jensen was able to make out the discolouration due to the fast acting circuitry that was hidden behind the shield. He felt like he was being focused, measured… _assessed._

 

_‘And oh my god, what if Jay can’t…’_

 

“It’s alright, Jay, you’re going to be fine, remember. I’m here to help you, Jay, can you help me get you up and over to the bed? That’s it, Jay, that’s going to be a lot more comfortable than the cold hard floor.”

 

Jensen babbled on whatever came to his mind while he moved to put his hands around Jay’s left arm very slowly. He knew that if he couldn’t get the man to cooperate, there was no way he was going to get him off the floor, but before he could finish that thought, Major Lehne had knelt down next to him, carefully mirroring his movements. He looked at the head of security gratefully, before he turned his head and noticed that the rest of the team was still alert with their rifles turned on them as they worked to get Jay to stand up. Jensen knew that if the man acted out now, it was over, so he kept the steady stream of calming words going.

 

“That’s it, Jay, that’s the way to go.”

 

The whisper was too quiet for him to hear at first, but when he saw Jay’s lips move he strained to understand what the man was saying.

 

“…red… my… me… my name is Jared. My name is Jared. My name is Jared.”


	6. Chapter five

Jared.

 

Jensen walked down the corridor in a haze. He’d set his patient up with a drip with fluid and a light sedative and made sure that the tac team was ushered outside and would remain that way until further notice. After that, he brushed off everyone, even Chris, telling them absent-mindedly that he was fine, he just needed some space, now, before he had all but fled the scene.

 

Jared.

 

However, he hadn’t counted on Traci waiting for him in his rooms, medi-bag and a perpetual scowl on her face that told him exactly what she thought of his behaviour towards his own health. He was in half a mind to comment that such a sour expression would accelerate the development of wrinkles, but he couldn’t find it in him to get the words out, hoping that if he submitted to her treatment silently, she would pay him the same courtesy. Jensen shrugged out of his coat, absently noting the little flecks of dried blood on the front. Then he fumbled with the buttons of his shirt although his arms heavily protested the movement. The adrenaline was finally draining out of his system completely, leaving him dizzy and shaking. It was only seconds before Traci batted his hands away and made quick work of his shirt, her movements brisk and efficient.

 

Jared.

 

She looked up at him with barely veiled disapproval, but her eyes widened and slid from anger to concern in a heartbeat when she saw the bruises forming on his throat and layering his chest. He knew well enough that a couple of those ribs were no longer bruised, but cracked, and as much as he needed to be back in the game asap, he knew that this would definitely slow him down for a few days.

 

After she was done, Traci put a bottle of pills on his nightstand and ordered “Take them” before she packed up her things and left the room. Jensen sat down on the bed gingerly, his legs suddenly feeling like jelly, and stared at the door while the seconds ticked away, one by one.

 

Jared.

 

He cradled his face in his hands, only then noticing the wetness on his cheeks and buried his fingers in his hair.

 

“What have I done? What have I done. What the flying fuck have I done.”

 

Jared woke to a slow and steady beep and dimmed fluorescent lights shining down from a concrete ceiling. He stared straight up, letting event of the past minutes – wait, hours… days? – float back into his mind, waiting for his heart to speed up. The rhythm of the sound around him didn’t change. He could feel eyes on him, knew there was another person in the room, and their exact location, because even though they didn’t speak, they were certainly not silent. He debated with himself whether to face the doctor or outwait him, until he decided to break the silence. It would be one of the few things Jared felt like he could still control, unlike his body, a conscious decision to make this as hard as he possibly could. But the longer he listened, the clearer became the sounds that made up the human body, even though most people never bothered to actually hear them. The continuous thuds of a beating heart, pushing blood through veins and sucking it back in, muscle working, fluttering faster on every second or third beat, anticipatory. Fingers twitching, tapping an arbitrary rhythm against a flat surface, a hungry gurgle, the soft swoosh of breath. In and out, air filling lungs and leaving it, used and diminished, but there was something off, something wrong, something…

 

Jared turned his head to take in the sight of the doctor, reclining silently in a chair next to his bed. He also noted the due distance, and the fact that the calm and collected – cold – demeanour of the man would never betray to the outside that he was inconvenienced, much less hurt. Jared let his eyes travel upward slowly, still daring the doctor to initiate the conversation that he was clearly burning to have. He flicked over the bruises barely concealed under the black turtleneck and up to his face, over those lips _chapped, but soft and pliant_ \- not going there! - to the taped cut at his eyebrow, raised flesh knitted together by dry scabs, and finally settled on those eyes. They had been very expressive when they’d last met, now they were empty, closed off.

 

Then Jared went back for a second and re-examined his thoughts.

 

“Jeez, what kinda shit have you got me on?”

 

Jensen felt the beginnings of a smile tug at his mouth, but he tamped it down with an effort before answering:

 

“Only a light sedative, more for the benefit of my team than me to be honest. As you might imagine, they were kind of concerned about our last encounter and insisted, so that you ‘would quit using you as his personal punching bag, Doctor Ackles,’ if you allow me to quote our resident physician.”

 

He watched the same whisper of a smile tug at the edge of Jared’s mouth, even though it vanished just as fast, leaving him with a gaze as cold and hard as flint.

 

“There is also the matter of explaining to you the current state of affairs in a more in depth manner for which your remaining calm and letting me finish for once will be beneficial.”

 

“So you want to go into detail with me about what kind of fucked up freak you made me? That’s terribly self-absorbed, don’t you think?”

 

At that moment, Jared saw the first glimmer of real emotion spark in the doctor’s posture, an impotent rage that flooded his body with tension. Jared suddenly found a depraved kind of pleasure in riling the man up.

 

“We do not _make_ freaks here. We help people who are beyond saving by ordinary medical means, with a very complicated and advanced technology, to get their control back over life and limb.”

 

“Oh, but it was different for me, wasn’t it? They were ordered to have me terminated, because I was _out of control._ Then why wouldn’t you let _me_ die?”

 

That made the good doctor actually surge forward and get into his face.

 

“Because I have to accept too many of my patients are going to die anyway, and you didn’t, why can… why can’t you just…”

 

“What? Why can’t I what? Be grateful for your inhuman efforts to feed that little god complex you got going there?”

 

He followed the doctor’s sudden movements warily when the man got up and started to pace, physical pain and mental exhaustion still evident in his face.

 

“No, damnit, that’s not what I… you’re… what you did… look, all the systems that we successfully integrated in your body are self-sufficient in the way that they repair and regenerate like real organs would, but they still need to be controlled by a central operating system. Now, for most, it just takes an adjustment period with fine-tuning recalibration during rehab to work their systems flawlessly in tune with their bodies, so that they can rely on those body parts just as confidently as on the rest. But you… I mean, we obviously hoped that something like that might possible in the future, which is why the central systems are designed to such a capacity…” The doctor stopped his pacing to look at Jared with the feverish enthusiasm of an explorer. “… but you, it’s like your brain just plugged in and wired the control unit right into the rest of your nervous system, tapping into _all_ the information that’s being processed, not only the amount of data one would need for a normal sensory and motor functionality. We’ve never seen anything like it, which is why we certainly weren’t prepared for the state you woke up in, but we will be from now on.”

 

Jared waited for a couple of beats and let the doctor hang on with his hopeful and certainly dramatic sales pitch. But he wasn’t fooled.

 

“So let me get this straight. Basically you found out that I am a really special kind of super freak, and, on top of that, you have no idea what makes me tick?”

 

It was almost comical to watch the doctor’s face scrunch up to a not so beautiful grimace, while he looked like he was seconds away from stamping his foot like a five-year-old in a tantrum.

 

“No, that’s entirely not what I…”

 

“So, let’s say, if I were to cooperate, jump through your hoops, be a good boy and give you your top secret Nobel prize material or whatever, would that get me out of here?”

 

That made the good doctor stop dead in his tracks with a hint of uncertainty coloring his features as he stepped closer to the bed again.

 

“I… I suppose so, if we’ve gathered sufficient data and concluded our research, I don’t see why you shouldn’t return to being a valuable asset to the armed forces once more. I… have no reason to believe that you wouldn’t be able leave this facility like all my other patients before you, to be reassigned wherever they see fit to send you. Or leave once you’ve served your time, should that be what you want.”

 

Jared almost wanted to laugh at how naïve this doctor seemed to be in some matters, despite being clearly the most intelligent person in the whole bunker. But he would take what he could get and cut his losses as soon as he saw a chance.

 

“Then that’s the deal. I’ll put up with your poking and prodding – within reason – and refrain from making… a spectacle out of ourselves like the other day, and you will get me out of here as soon as you have some bullshit to feed your superiors.”

 

The doctor gaped at him for a few seconds, but he obviously had at least a bit of sense in him, because he shut his mouth and nodded in agreement. Jared couldn’t stop himself from grabbing the man’s wrist in a brusque move, purposefully keeping the grip light, because he suspected that he could grind those delicate bones under his fingers to powder.

 

“But if you overstep your boundaries like _that_ one more time,” he let his eyes purposefully glide over those lips once more. “I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

 

Jared wasn’t quite sure what kind of action was attached to the business end of this threat, but from the wide and terrified look he got in return, he would not be tempted to find out anytime soon.

 

Chris found Jensen in Research and Development, standing in front of the five foot, silicate plasma screens that could show you anything about the research conducted in this facility, but he was not at all surprised that Jensen faced a multi-dimensional schematic of a brain in the midst of a flurry of activity. Jensen always went into the miniscule details when he needed to calm down. He was staring intently at the scans they’d made while their patient was out for the count, and he was recuperating while Chris had handled the fall-out over the Amber alert report. Which is why he felt entitled to rip Jensen from his thoughtful moment.

 

“I see you have no new bruises or broken bones, I count that as a win.”

 

Jensen tried to ignore him by frowning even more intently at the images, while tension radiated from his shoulders and crossed arms. But he had tried that before, and Chris knew exactly how much longer he needed to hold on to outwait him.

 

“I explained his situation, and we came to an understanding. His behaviour is not going to be a problem from now on.”

 

“And yet you look positively unhappy about what might prove to be the scientific breakthrough of the century.”

 

Jensen actually scowled, which took Chris aback. Of all the storms they’d had to weather, doubt in the progressive necessity of his work had never once been on the table.

 

“This is what we’ve been waiting for; this is what the design was supposed to achieve, accidentally or not. So what is it, that’s got your… oh… not really, this can’t seriously be about your _crush_ , can it?”

 

His only answer was a huff, and Jensen hunching over his tablet to type in some recalculations that arranged into a different perspective on the screen. 

 

“No, it’s not.”

 

“You don’t sound so sure about that.”

 

Finally Jensen rounded on him, eyes blazing with barely contained fury that mingled a hint of fear.

 

“No, it’s not, damn it! It was unprofessional and stupid, and a product of being cooped up here for so long with nothing but sand and rocks, and more fucking sand all around, and fifty miles until you reach the fence, only to hit more fucking New Mexican desert. It’s done, all right?”

 

The outburst caught Chris half by surprise, but before he could throw up his hands and back off, Jensen turned to the screen and pointed at a certain area of the image.

 

“This is what’s bothering me. Do you see that?”

 

Jensen watched intently as Chris studied the screen, and he was thoroughly satisfied when he saw the penny drop.

 

“That… that activity level is way too low, even for a sedated state. And that’s definitely scar tissue, but that shouldn’t be…”

 

“You’re right, there shouldn’t be, but there definitely is. I guess there was some damage from the initial blast trauma, and the in-transport complications can’t have helped in that regard.”

 

“So what do you think happened?”

 

“My best guess? When his brain went online again, it circumvented the damaged hard-drive and went for the external processing space. For all intents and purposes, the central control unit acts in perfect sync with his neuronal matrix.”

 

Chris looked at his best friend, who was anxiously worrying the nail of his thumb. As a rule, Jensen Ackles did not guess.

 

“So we’ve got absolutely no idea how far he can take it, what he can do.”

 

“No. We’re flying blind on this one.”

 

It certainly wasn’t the first time they had encountered an unexpected side-effect they’d had to deal with. That was, after all, how groundbreaking scientific observations were made. But it was the first time that Jensen looked genuinely unsure about whether he’d be able to handle it.

 

Jared felt his skin prickle as the last of the sedative filtered out of his system. It hadn’t really clouded his senses or kept him from moving for the past couple of hours, but, all the same, he had no desire to open his eyes and face the world. Flimsy vestiges of another dream were clinging to him, but he didn’t try to hold onto them. They were bleak, full of red dirt and agony. Jared burrowed deeper into the pillow and resisted the urge to curl up and hide himself from the world. It would not make a difference because everything that was wrong with him was _inside._ Muscles bunching and quivering in his legs, nerves firing away at him to get rid of his inactivity when he shouldn’t even have been able to stand upright. Blood pumping slow and steady, no matter how much he wanted to think himself into a hysterical panic over the feel of the crisp sheets under his fingers where there should only have been a phantom ache. In a way the emptiness was still there, even though it was less physical and more… the feeling of being pieced together with spare parts that had once made up a complete person, and now someone had put the screws on wrong.

 

And down, deep, deep down, the shame and guilt for wanting it. Wanting to live, wanting to be whole.

 

Jared pressed his fingers into his eyes, shutting the world out, a futile attempt to shut down that otherness by not acknowledging it.

 

But his traitorous body wouldn’t leave it alone, and as if to compensate for his shunning of the sense of sight, suddenly the whisper of a sound burned loudly in his ears. It faded in and out, the pockets of sound sending shockwaves through his head, and he couldn’t contain it, couldn’t bear it, couldn’t… he needed to focus… on… some…

 

_“…_ _central control_ _unit … in_ _perfect_ _sync with his_ _neuronal matrix.”_

_“So we have_ _absolutely no idea_ _how far he can take it, what_ _he can do?”_

_“No._ _We’re flying_ _blind on_ _this_ _one.”_

 

Jared turned and threw his hands against his ears, trying to drown out that sound, that voice, that he wanted, wanted. His eyes flew open, and he stared intently at the blank and seamless ceiling until the sounds grew mute, and the familiar burning started behind his eyes. Then he blinked rapidly and suddenly everything fell back into normality, no blue tinge, no bugs crawling the walls, perfect stillness. Jared slowly lifted his hands from his ears and let out a little breath of relief when nothing extraordinary happened for once. He sat up gingerly, but apart from some of the instruments whirring hurriedly, there were no unexpected surprises this time. Figured that at the very moment he found out that he was apparently so extra-freaky as to even puzzle the resident super-brain, his overdrive senses would choose to finally leave him alone for a precious minute.

 

Actually, when he bothered to look around, he found the room much less crowded by medical equipment and more embellished with simple furniture, looking much more like a normal human dwelling as well. And on the chair next to his bed, he even found a change of clothes, just shorts, sweatpants and t-shirt, but certainly a little more substantial than the paper-thin hospital pyjamas he was wearing right now. He was still itching to get on his feet, though, and he figured now was as good a time as any to get dressed and explore a little bit. Find out more about the restrictions and boundaries he would face as long as he remained in here. Wherever here actually was.

 

When Jared stepped up to the transparent, sliding doors they opened without so much a swoosh or a single complaint. He decided to take that as permission to step outside into the empty corridor beyond. At least they hadn’t seen fit to post a guard at his door, which he took for a good sign. His legs felt half like steel and yet half like jelly, as likely to buckle under him any second as not. His presence might get the silent alarm going again, but he had to take the risk to get a handle on his surroundings. If he didn’t get to know the layout of the building there was no way he was getting out of here on his own terms. He silently walked by a couple of closed doors and then an open one with merry chatter drifting out, but its occupants completely unaware of his presence. Jared took a couple of left turns to avoid both people and losing his orientation in these identical looking corridors, but with the third turn his luck ran out. A slender, doe-eyed woman stepped through a door and turned right, just the moment he came around the corner, almost colliding with him. She looked at his chest for a second, then up, and her mouth dropped open. Jared had automatically frozen but decided to go with the wait-and-see approach as she picked her jaw off the floor and pointed an imperious finger at him.

 

“You. Stay right there.”

 

Before he could decide what do next, she had reached into the pocket of her lab coat and produced a tablet much like the one he had seen with the doctor before and tapped away on the smooth surface with quick fingers.

 

“Jensen, you better come up to the Infirmary. Your latest project is wandering the halls.”

 

Jared scowled at the impersonal epithet, but the indignant squack that answered them over the intercom made a grin tug at the edges of his mouth. The woman in front of him looked up again, eyes racking over his frame with quick, efficient movements, clearly a medical professional taking stock. She stopped at his face and met his eyes head on with a disapproving stare.

 

“So you’re the hulk who’s gotten into the habit of roughing up my charges?”

 

Jared bristled and crossed his arms in front of his chest, which he knew made his stature all the more imposing.

 

“Excuse me if waking up in ‘Universal Soldier,’ after being blasted halfway to hell by a missile made me just a tad bit erratic.”

 

“Oh trust me, been there, done that. You’re not the first one to flail around a little bit when they wake up and knock stuff over. What I’m talking about is that little spectacle you made the other day which almost got you both killed. You broke one of his _ribs_ and cracked a few more just for good measure.”

 

“What, I…”, Jared taken aback by that sudden attack, being chewed out by a woman that was about half his weight. “I didn’t know that.”

 

She huffed impatiently.

 

“Of course you didn’t, you’ve done nothing but sulk and throw accusations around, threatening the people who saved your life. He’s just trying to _help,_ you know? I know it’s tough to deal with a trauma like yours, but the least you could do is show a little gratitude to the man who ran himself ragged for 36 hours just to save your ass.”

 

Jared stared at her helplessly as she stabbed her finger into the air in front of his face for emphasis.

 

He hadn’t really considered… really wanted to consider… hadn’t thought about how badly hurt the doctor might have been.

 

“I … I couldn’t…”

 

“Traci! What have you…? Oh, there you are, you shouldn’t really… are you alright?”

 

For the first time Jared looked at the doctor, and he really _looked._ He saw the hesitantly outstretched hand, the open face, the tightness around the wide green eyes for what it was. Genuine concern for his welfare and the honest desire to help. It kind of took his breath away to realize how unjustified some of his actions might have been, understandable as though they were. Jared fumbled for words in the wake of his realization, and the only thing he could manage was, “Uhm, yeah, I’m fine.”

 

An awkward pause settled onto them standing there in the corridor as if no one really knew what came next. Jensen didn’t dare touch Jared or tell him that he had to go back to his room, and he wasn’t quite sure how the man would react to being asked… Either way it was not like he could move him against his will. Jared on the other hand seemed genuinely unsure of what he _wanted_ to do next, and Jensen could see that Traci must have said something that had rattled the forceful soldier out of some of his confidence. Just when the silence between them seemed to stretch into infinity, a gurgling growl spoke of an empty stomach demanding to be filled. Jensen tried to suppress the grin that wanted to spread over his face with all he had in him, not quite managing all the way. He was just about as successful in dealing with the heat that pooled in his belly from the blush that rose on Jared’s cheeks, but Jensen knew how to use an out when it presented itself, and he had other things to worry about beside his capricious libido right now.

 

They ended up in a small sitting area, the doctor fixing himself a big mug of coffee while he arranged for some kind of light broth to be brought for Jared. Jared lowered himself carefully onto one of the comfortable couches, gripping his knees hard to hide just how much his legs were shaking from the effort of walking the few yards down the corridor. He needn’t have bothered, since the doctor was quite busy turning his back to the rest of the room, but still he couldn’t quell the instinctive reaction to hide weakness. What he could see consciously for the first time was the stiff and careful way the doctor held himself, and how hesitantly he lowered himself into the seat on the opposite side to Jared. He wasn’t the only one unwilling to admit to weakness after all, but the evidence of his rash actions didn’t really do much to quell Jared’s slow-burning anger. It just added an acrid taste of guilt to it. Jared closed his eyes gratefully, concentrating on taking little sips from his own mug for the moment. He hadn’t eaten anything under his own power for however many weeks, so there was no way he would be keeping anything more substantial down, but he was glad to have a task to focus on that didn’t require addressing the increasingly muddled shades of grey his world had turned into.

 

“How are you feeling?”

 

Jensen cringed at the poor choice of words right after they left his mouth, even before the other man could look up and shrug helplessly.

 

“Listen, I…

 

“What would…”

 

They stopped to look at each other for a moment after starting to speak at the same time until Jensen motioned for Jared to continue.

 

“I… I’m sorry for what I… I mean…”

 

“No, don’t be, it was as much my fault to begin with. We didn’t… anticipate your unique situation, so there were no contingencies in place for how to handle it properly, even though there should have been. I should have seen this coming, it is after all a possibility I had in mind when I designed the system, even though it seemed almost too outlandish to consider.”

 

“You mean what with that central control unit being in perfect sync with my neuronal matrix and all that?”

 

Jensen felt the blood drain from his face in an instant.

 

“How do you know that?”

 

“I didn’t, well not for sure until just now. I heard you, you know? Or at least I assume I did and considering other possibilities makes me squeamish, so…”

 

Jensen stared into his coffee as if it was likely to talk back at him at any moment, spewing solutions out of the blue. Of course it didn’t, but it gave his brain the much needed reprieve to go into overdrive and start running calculations and system specifics against each other and…

 

“We’re going to have to be very creative to figure out how far you can go.”

 

Jared looked back at him, wary, but resigned.

 

“I was afraid you might say that.”

 

“Look, we…”

 

“No, it’s alright, I get it. I’m stuck here, until I get a handle on it and won’t accidentally squash someone to death trying to give them a hug or something. I still don’t like it, but I understand now how it’s necessary.”

 

Jensen had nothing much to answer to that that wasn’t clear as a day anyway. He looked in Jared’s face, taking in the very different kinds of emotions that were reflected there. Helpless anger and hurt, wary resignation, but also a sliver of acceptance. He would have to take what the man could give, even if it was just an uneasy truce, but their conversation gave him hope that he might be able to persuade Jared to view this more as a gift than a curse, given some time.

[](http://mangacat201.livejournal.com/57273.html)


	7. Chapter six

“I’m very glad to see you seem to be faring well, Jensen, after the incident report came in; I wasn’t quite sure what state I’d find you in when we spoke next.”

 

Jensen nodded and thanked Lt. Com. Morgan for his kind words. They might have been a little impersonal, but Jensen had worked with the man long enough to recognize the tension around his eyes, and the flat line of his lips as a sign of genuine worry. He was also quite sure that he wasn’t the only focus of Morgan’s thoughts, so he proceeded with update on their current research.

 

“I’m alright, thanks, and nothing happened that a couple of weeks of light exercise and a little more rest than I customarily require can’t fix.”

 

It was true, even if ‘light exercise’ in this case meant taking agonizingly deep breaths on a regular basis to keep him from getting pneumonia no matter how little his aggravated ribs liked the procedure.

 

“And I can also assure you that the amount of progress we’ve made since then has surpassed my expectations by far. Rehabilitation of sensory and motor functions advances with a 20% acceleration compared to our average case studies, and we’re slowly moving into a territory where we can test his performance level above the 100% percent average.”

 

Morgan nodded gravely, and Jensen waited for him to ask about what he really wanted to know, since these personal updates were more pro forma than not. Jensen knew Morgan could find everything that had happened over the last week documented in the detailed report Jensen had sent him earlier today.

 

“I… may I be frank?” At Jensen’s nod he continued. “What I really want to know… how is he?”

 

Jensen wanted to sigh as he thought about which way to best describe Jared’s state of mind. He knew they were not talking about muscle development or hand-to-eye coordination, but Jared’s defiant lack of cooperation, his initial mistrust in the proceedings until everything had been explained to him in detail, and his stubborn refusal to accept counselling to address the sporadic symptoms of post traumatic stress and the body image issues that arose from his situation.

 

“He’s… dealing. He won’t accept most of the help we are trying to give him, but at least he’s not fighting me anymore on every step of the way. I’m doing whatever I can to make the transition easier, but I’m not exactly his favourite person in the world. He can be quite stubborn if he wants to be.”

 

A smile stretched Morgan’s lips and he nodded.

 

“That sounds like him.”

 

Jensen looked down for a moment before meeting the Commander’s eyes again. He needed a moment to keep his thoughts under wraps. Besides Chris, Morgan had always been the person on the team that he felt most comfortable talking too, but given his background with Jared, Jensen didn’t dare broach the subject of the rising tension between them that was of a different kind. He hadn’t mentioned it in the report of course, and he certainly hadn’t forgotten the threat that Jared had issued when they’d struck their deal. Jensen had kept his feelings under wraps and out of Jared’s personal space as much as possible within the boundaries of medical examination, but he couldn’t help feeling that the current ran both ways sometimes. He had denied himself even the speculation, afraid of where that road might lead and now shook himself out of his thoughts to bid Morgan goodbye, before he could blurt out the whole sordid story. After the Commander had logged off, Jensen scrubbed his hands over his face and told himself that he needed to get back into the game. After all, there still was the small matter of investigating how Jared’s unique situation had come about. With the readings of the tests and training sessions, he had by now gotten a pretty good idea how Jared’s body workedand some fairly accurate calculations of his top performance levels. He still wasn’t any closer to the ‘why’ though, and the avid scholar inside of him demanded answers.

 

~*~

 

Jared breathed heavily through clenched teeth and then groaned with desperate abandon.

 

“That’s it, push just a little bit harder.”

 

He glared at the doctor through his sweat-soaked bangs. 

 

“You’re sure you run a medical facility here and not a government approved torture chamber?”

 

“Quite so I’m afraid. I need to push you to the limit if I’m going to get to know what it is. You didn’t think this was going to be fun, did you?”

 

If Jared had a hand free, he would have resorted to a rude gesture in response, but as it was he had to resort to blowing his cheeks up and focusing on not letting the weight drop. His arms started to tremble imperceptibly, but he was determined to give the doctor something to brag about if he had to endure this gruelling regimen. The past couple of weeks had been mostly dedicated to rehabilitation, but now they were slowly going beyond what he had been able to do _Before._ It still gave Jared whiplash when he thought about how fast his body had recovered from the traumatic ordeal. His mind was a whole different can of worms though. His nightmares alternated between the mind-numbing sounds of war, and horrific scenarios of being suddenly remote-controlled and a prisoner in own body.

 

Jared closed his eyes and concentrated on the exercise in an attempt to wipe his mind clean of these frightening and ultimately futile musings. At least the relationship with his caretakers had lost a good deal of the strain that had coloured their first interactions, to the point of being able to banter, even though Jared couldn’t help but keep his distance.

 

“That’s enough for today, you can let go, but make sure you set it down carefully.”

 

“I got it, don’t worry.”

 

Doctor Ackles looked at him with those expressive eyes, and Jared saw that he wanted to hover, but made the effort to refrain.

 

“I’m going to have to look you over more thoroughly today, since we went over capacity, and I want to make sure everything is still running smoothly.”

 

Jared nodded as he walked over to the side of the room and hopped onto the exam table, but a knot formed in the pit of his stomach. The doctor was entirely professional, voice calm and collected as he asked Jared to remove his t-shirt and spread his arms to the side. But still, the brush of fingertips following the groves of his muscles, careful pressure searching for possible tissue damage felt scorching on his skin even as gooseflesh broke out all over his torso. He hadn’t been touched at all except in a clinical manner, but the doctor’s close presence during those examinations had begun to catch up with Jared.

 

He knew what it was, of course he knew. His first reaction to the kiss had been a mix of age-old repression, and the volatile cocktail of emotions that had raced through him. But if he was quite honest, he wouldn’t have thought twice about giving in to this mutual attraction under any other circumstances.

 

“You seem lost in your thoughts a lot today.”

 

The comment startled him out of his thoughts, and he flinched a little, feeling the doctor recede another half step with a familiar, wary tension hanging between them. No matter which way you looked at it, they never seem to get it quite right.

 

“It’s… nothing, I’m alright, just…”

 

Ackles nodded absentmindedly and put the stethoscope into his ears to check Jared’s heartbeat. It was only a couple of seconds before a rush of dizziness hit Jared out of the blue again, and the pulse in his ears turned into a loud, insistent thumping and then into an offbeat staccato that was two heartbeats mixed and matched. Then other sounds filtered in, making his head spin. He felt his breath accelerate as vertigo swept over him. These unexpected influxes of data were still most unsettling for him.

 

“Goddamnit, I can’t deal with this.”

 

“It’s ok, you’re ok, just … breathe slowly, no don’t, slow and steady, in and out, that’s it, ride it out. In and out, now close your eyes and listen; are you listening? Good, no tone it down. That’s it, turn the volume down, just… so.”

 

Jared opened his eyes and blinked away the moisture, before he let out a relieved breath at the fact that everything seemed to be normal again. He could deal with the physical stuff, bench-pressing a bit more than he was used to, quicker reflexes, but the sensory data overload that just flickered on and off without his conscious decision threw him into a loop every time. It was proof that this … foreign thing in his body that did things without his say so was really there, and it scared him. What scared him even more was how easily the doctor seemed to be able to talk him out of those episodes. He took a deep breath and lifted his eyes to the concerned expression on the doctor’s face.

 

“How do you always know what to say?”

 

“I… I don’t, I just…”

 

“Never mind,” Jared had had enough handholding for the day. “I’m going to go… get some rest.”

 

Doctor Ackles opened his mouth to say something else, but he seemed change his mind mid-thought and just nodded, making a sweeping gesture for the door. Jared could feel his gaze burning at the back of his head, but he refused to turn around and ask for comfort, even though he longed nothing more than share his fears with someone he trusted. He couldn’t trust anyone here, no matter how much he wanted to.

 

Jensen looked at Jared’s retreating back and balled his fists in the coarse material of his lab-coat. He badly wanted to go after his patient, because he understood the thoughts clearly written all over his face, even when Jared thought himself subtle. It wasn’t his place though, Jensen had to remind himself. His place was here, saving lives, making them better and then letting them go when their time was up. It wasn’t Jared’s fault that he was a very special case in so many respects. Jensen turned back and busied himself with the analysis of the data they had gathered that day. As expected, Jared’s motor performance had begun to surpass his natural average level to increase to about 130%, but that seemed to be the threshold. He wouldn’t be able to punch in walls (not concrete walls anyway.) or jump buildings, but his strength and endurance were well above average, equipping him with the ability to persevere in the most hostile environments a lot better than before. A quite useful skill to have, sure, but not something that they hadn’t ever come close to with other patients. What was a real phenomenon were the greatly accelerated reflexes, and of course the unique sensory data processing, through which Jared could consciously review input stream and use computerized data on a decision making level that neither of their previous subjects had ever been able to access. True, it was erratic, and often Jared had little or no control over the perception changes, but Jensen had already begun to develop techniques to alleviate the problem. He was quite confident he had come close to figuring out how the neuronal interfacing process worked. What he hadn’t been able to get one lick closer to was _how_ it had happened in the first place, and it was frustrating him endlessly, because none of the tests they had come up with had yielded any more conclusive results. Jensen pondered the screen in front of him with a frown, then sighed deeply, and followed that by gripping the edges of the table with a white-knuckled grip. His ribs were healing nicely, or so Traci said, even though she gave him the stink-eye for not getting as much rest as he was supposed to. Still, they were not quite there yet. Jensen took it as a sign to finally call it a day and leave the musings for the morning.

 

~*~

 

Jensen was very satisfied with the results of the following day. They had kept the physical exercise to a minimum and gone over meditation techniques instead, as a way for Jared to learn how to deal with the overwhelming information influx of a sensory spike as well as foraying into bringing them about in a controlled and deliberate manner. He still griped and groaned all along the way, but Jensen felt that it was more of a coping mechanism than real discontent so let it pass or just joined in. Everyone in the team looked less apprehensive and rattled every day, not waiting for another catastrophic outburst at every turn, and Jensen counted that as a win concerning his handling of the situation. He still caught Chris throwing him looks sometimes, but his friend had accepted the truce and didn’t needle Jensen any further about his inappropriate feelings. Given the relative calmness of the waters, Jensen had no qualms about the upcoming status report.

 

Until he got a three star general on the line instead of Lt. Com. Morgan that is.

 

“Dr. Ackles, I assume you’re all well?”

 

“Certainly, General Hightower, as well as can be expected, I guess.”

 

“Yes, yes, the committee read the regular reports with great interest and were quite pleased that you were able to turn around the situation to a positive outcome. It would have been a great scientific loss indeed, had things gone… other ways.”

 

Jensen had never greatly appreciated the way higher military administrative officials phrased their way around actually saying that the shit had hit the fan and some serious mucking out had to be done, but he agreed amiably all the same. Still, he couldn’t help the sense of unease that settled in the pit of his stomach when he observed the expression on the sharp if considerably wrinkled face.

 

“I completely agree, and I’m very glad that we were able to resolve the incident without any harm done to either party. If you don’t mind me asking though, is there some urgent matter that required this kind of personal address from the committee chairman?”

 

The General’s stony features gave nothing away, neither divulging whether he’d been caught out or expected the inquiry.

 

“Oh, rest assured we’ve been quite pleased with the progress of the project so far, however, the committee feels that recent developments needed a more immediate approach to avoid clearance delays in furthering progress and giving you the opportunity to successfully complete your research.”

 

This particular phrasing served to make the hairs on Jensen’s neck stand on end.

 

“Tell me, are those extraordinary applications of your system viable for combat tactics, intel confirmation, infiltration, extraction and the like?”

 

Jensen knew full well that the General was quite aware of all the potential applications of Jared’s skills, once they were refined. What he really wanted to know was whether they could use him as a perfectly honed war machine. Jensen had been thinking about that for quite some time. Of course he had always known that most of the men and women he’d saved were released to go back into the service, but he had never closely examined how their abilities would change the dynamic of their teams, especially since they were not cleared to offer any information on their treatment here. For Jared though, it would be much more difficult, still, Jensen was obliged to grant full access and respond to any questions, so he couldn’t safely hold back what he knew.

 

“Sir, I believe with a certain amount of instruction and practice – pardon me when I say that we’re kind of figuring that out as we go along – the subject will be able to use the system to full capacity, which means enhanced physical strength, endurance and reflexes as well as way above average human sensory perception. I haven’t had the opportunity to assess the full range of tactical application, but I’m sure it will be enormous, once we get the fine-tuning under control that is.”

 

The general looked pleased, but also ponderous as he nodded and then went on:

 

“Very interesting. However, as scientifically productive as this... anomaly has proved to be, we understand that you are still unclear as to how exactly it came about, correct?”

 

“Yes, Sir, we’ve been gathering data through extensive testing, but so far, the actual mechanics or circumstances that caused this unique reaction remain quite elusive.”

 

“Have you tried every possible course of action to obtain those results?”

 

“Well, we have been developing new analytical scripts based on the original schematics of the system and are reviewing possible adjustments to our diagnostic equipment, but it’s going to take some time to work through all these and see if we get clearer results. I have discarded invasive testing of course, since it’s high risk procedure which is not indicated for our current status.”

 

Jensen decidedly didn’t like the way the general perked up at his last remark.

 

“How would you describe the odds of such a procedure yielding the aforementioned results?”

 

“I would call it at about 30 %, but as I said, that way would require deeply invasive surgery to recently traumatized and recovering areas of the brain and spinal column. There is at least an 80% chance that the procedure would disrupt or damage cerebral processes that are delicate under normal circumstances, but absolutely unpredictable in this case. Under the present circumstances I would strongly dissuade anyone from attempting such practices in consideration of the subject’s viability.”

 

“But such a procedure could in your opinion unearth the cause that you’ve been so diligently searching for.”

 

“Theoretically, yes, but the chances are very…”

 

Jensen felt a sudden coldness enter his limbs while rivulets of sweat ran down his back, and it was everything he could do to keep his face straight at what happened next.

 

“Dr. Ackles, you’ve hereby been granted authorization to exhaust any means in your capacity to extricate the required information for a full report.”

 

“But…”

 

“You’ve been given the green light, Dr. Ackles, and we expect the first conclusive results one week from now.”

 

All the blood drained from Jensen’s face in a dizzying rush as he stood there frozen, staring at the screen’s empty communication window, his mind racing with the implications of what had just been said.

 

They didn’t want him to enable Jared to go back into the service as a soldier with superior abilities. They wanted him to build them an army of his kind. At any price.

 

Jensen couldn’t have told how much time passed while he was standing pale and motionless in front of his workstation, but one thought looped in his mind again and again.

 

Then in a sudden flurry of activity his hands flew to the computer and after a few seconds the screen was empty no longer.

"I need your help."


	8. Chapter seven

Jared knew something was up, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. Everybody else seemed oblivious to it, but he had spent so much time with Ackles in the last two and a half weeks that he was quite attuned to the man’s moods and tells. There was tension in his demeanour that was completely separate from what Jared was used to, and the closer he came to being able to shut down unhelpfully spontaneous sensory spikes, the more he was able to ascertain his observations. He didn’t continuously think about it, there were other pressing matters on his mind after all – get out of his head, out of his dreams, out of here – but it seethed in the back of his mind, ramping up a strange sense of anticipation that frazzled his nerves. Which is why he wasn’t at all surprised when he lay awake, bathed in cold sweat one night, and suddenly the door swished open quietly, and a shadowed figure stole into the room. He sat slowly, sheets pooling down around his waist and barely kept himself from throwing a punch when long fingers closed around his arm. Doctor Ackles’ face slid out of the darkness, and he signalled silence with a finger on his lips before throwing something down on the bed next to Jared and motioning at it with his hands. In the ever-present faint glow of the monitors, Jared could barely make out what it was, but when he touched it he immediately recognized the fabric under his fingers and wasted no time putting on the uniform. He followed the doctor, who had yet to utter a word, out into the grey corridors and easily kept the pace when they headed a way he had never taken before. An unobtrusive entrance, and an ID-check later, they stood in an impressive arsenal with the doctor stopping, seeming somewhat uncertain for the first time, biting his lip indecisively. Jared knew that whatever was going on, this was not the right moment to be asking questions, so he settled for taking in the unfamiliar appearance of the doctor with plain dark civilian clothes replacing his usual white armour.

 

Jensen felt sweat bead on his forehead as he took in the rows and rows of guns, trying to find the right rack in all the weaponry on display. He finally closed his eyes to make himself _think,_ since this ridiculous escape plan had already worked about three steps further than he had dreamed to ever get with it, and it wouldn’t do to get caught out on the wrong choice of weapon of all things. He finally recognized what he was looking for and resolutely lifted one off the rack and thrust it in Jared’s arms, hoping to all the heavens that the other man would know what to do with it, before he pinned the ID-card to the uniform jacket. Now came the hard part.

 

“You need to go back up the corridor. Take three rights, one left and take the elevator up to the top level. Turn left, two corners, then relieve the guard post of his shift. Show the ID, but make sure that he doesn’t take too close a look at the picture; if there are any questions, tell them that you’ve just been assigned under orders 224-alpha/56, can you do that?”

 

“Sure thing. Mind telling me what all this is about while we’re at it?”

 

Jensen wanted to say everything there was to say, so badly, but they didn’t have time.

 

“I have to get you out of here.”

 

Jared looked at him with a grave expression for a few seconds, and then he nodded.

 

“I’ll meet you at the north wall of Building 624 fifteen minutes into the shift, that’s a 45° angle crossing right from the regular post. Now go.”

 

Jensen closed his eyes when he heard the soft swish of the door and started counting.

 

They say that your life flashes in front of your eyes in the moment you die, but for Jensen it was this moment in time, waiting in agonizing silence for the alarm to go off wailing or something, picturing Chris’ furious face, hoping that his best friend would be able to decrypt the message that he’d hidden on the tablet, however insubstantial and brief it might have been in case someone else got to it first. Jensen continued breathing, his head spinning about all the things, all the people and questions about whether it was worth it, but then he reached the count, and his feet moved without a second thought.

 

There was no going back now.

 

~*~

 

Jared felt his heart hammer against his ribcage and wondered for a fleeting moment if it was strong enough to beat out of his chest as he followed the doctor’s instructions and miraculously did not meet any of the quite frankly expected obstacles. He couldn’t believe that this was really happening, not that he hadn’t entertained plans about leaving this facility with a different destination than the higher-ups had in mind, but the way the doctor had facilitated this exit had come completely out of the blue. Still, the machine gun was a heavy and familiar weight in his hands, and the comforting sound of his boots on concrete helped him fall back into practiced motions and lines of thought in no time and did wonders to alleviate his nervousness. The final minutes of patrolling aimlessly and waiting, waiting for something wasn’t sure was going to happen, that was agony. When Jared finally heard steps, he was equally prepared to face either Ackles or as another tac team out for his hide. But it was a lone figure who rounded the corner and headed straight for Jared.

 

“We don’t have much time, but we have to be careful to avoid the camera angles on the way out of the immediate vicinity of the buildings. Here, take this and lose the gun.”

 

“What? No, I can’t just…”

 

“It won’t be of any help with what we’re about to attempt. On the contrary, if we’re spotted and happen to be ARMED I don’t have to tell you it will be shoot first, ask questions later. Besides, we can’t afford to take anything that weighs us down.”

 

Jared was reluctant to relinquish his hold on the fickle protection, but if his idea of what they were going to do was anything close to accurate, he knew it was the right thing to do.

 

“How far?”

 

“How far what?”

 

“How far do we need to go tonight?”

 

The doctor shot him a glance over the shoulder before hurrying on in a carefully placed zigzag around the buildings.

 

“We need to go straight North to get past the fence and find transportation that’s been left for us.” _Hopefully,_ “It’s about 35 miles.”

 

Jared felt the blood drain from his face, but he couldn’t let his step falter.

 

“What kind of terrain? Straight up desert, or nasty surprises?”

 

Ackles fiddled with his watch for a moment before answering.

 

“There’s some canyons and rocky cliffs on the way that we have to be careful with, but no mine fields or the like. They believe inconspicuousness is the better kind of protection for our kind of operation.”

 

Jared calculated the path in his head and figured that there was no way they would make it before daylight, but if they kept up a steady pace they could cover a considerable amount of ground, and the further away they got, the more thinly spread the search divisions were going to be, so there was a chance they could slip through the grid even after the sun was up. Having a civilian with him though, someone not used to this kind ordeal and recently injured to boot, was a whole different can of worms. But they didn’t have a choice, it was either go forward or retreat to the bunker to face whatever horror had driven the doctor to this kamikaze mission in the first place. The desert it was then.

 

“It’s not going to be all that easy to navigate that kind of terrain in the darkness though.”

 

“Yes, now would be kind of a good thing to switch on the night vision, don’t you think?”

 

“Ha, you’re joking, right?... Right? Wait what? I can do that?”

 

“I doubt you’d be able to learn it on the fly, so I brought these.” Jared got a pair of goggles shoved unceremoniously into his hands. “but theoretically…”

 

Jared didn’t even deign to glorify that with an answer. Instead he followed the doctor out of the shadow of the last building and into the cold dark night.

 

Jensen concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, ignoring the incessant burn in his thighs or how the straps of the backpack seemed to cut into the flesh of his shoulders like steel wire. They had been walking a steady, but gruelling pace for about seven hours now, and the sun had just risen completely above the horizon. It was not yet scorching hot, but Jensen knew that they wouldn’t have much time before the temperatures would be rising exponentially, and they still probably had a good eight miles to go. Jared had taken the lead a while ago, long legs widening his stride, and instincts more familiar with the movement on desert terrain, and Jensen only double-checked that they were still on the right track from time to time. He saw Jared tense and turn his head sideways occasionally, but from the lack of panicked scrambling for cover, he assumed that, whatever might be happening, it was far away from them. He figured that under the best of circumstances the absence of the guard post hadn’t been noted for about three hours, until the required check-in time, and then it would have been still more time, before the staff realized they were missing. But Jensen had no illusions about the fact that there would be people hot on their heels a lot sooner than he was comfortable with. He and Jared hadn’t exchanged many words since they’d left the compound, but he knew that the other man had come to the same conclusion. Jensen longed to talk to him about his reaction to the whole scheme, but he couldn’t find it in him to find a thread of conversation to broach the subject. Besides, he didn’t really have any breath to spare for talking.

 

Oh, but it hurt to breathe.

 

A sudden rush, and an abrupt change of altitude made Jensen dizzy, the very tall silhouette of Jared blurring in front of his eyes. He felt a floating sensation for a moment as if he’d left his body behind and wondered if he’d stepped into an unexpected dip in the terrain when a pained grunt reached his ears muffled and distorted. Huh.

 

When Jared heard the thump and groan, it took only split second for him to turn around, but he already found Ackles on his knees, tilting like he was three sheets to the wind and about to fall flat on his face.

 

“No, no nonono, don’t do this too me, come on, get up.”

 

Jared knelt in front of him and tilted the other man’s head up, slapping his hand against Ackles’s cheek. He should have known that Ackles was faltering, he should have paid closer attention.

 

“Can’t…”

 

“Yes, you can, come on, drink this.”

 

Jared held a water bottle to Ackles’ lips and watched him sip carefully, until the last swallow went in the wrong way and had him spluttering and coughing all over the place, crying out in pain. He raised his eyes up to Jared’s face, bright and desperate, before he spoke.

 

“You have...to get.. going.”

 

“What? No, I can’t just leave you out here.”

 

“I’m slowing.. you down, chances .. are they’ll get us both that way. They .. don’t want.. me.”

 

Jared knew that wasn’t true. There were always consequences when you pulled shit like this, especially with the people they were up against.

 

“That’s bullshit. You have no idea what will happen to you if they find you.”

 

_And what if they don’t._

 

Jensen tried to breathe slowly through the agony and simultaneously concentrate on forming a striking argument.

 

“Doesn’t matter. I have.. to get you.. out. Get _going, Jared.”_

 

The use of his first name clearly startled Jared. Jensen had been referring to him by it in his mind, but not to his face, and that Jensen had held on to the information seemed to surprise him. But the shock lasted no more than a couple of seconds, before something gleamed in his eyes, and his expression turned as hard and stubborn as flint.

 

“You have to kno…”

 

“No. No man left behind.”

 

And with those words he dragged Jensen up in one staggering swoop and hooked Jensen’s right arm around his shoulders while wrapping his arm securely around Jensen’s hip, dragging him into a painful, stumbling walk.

 

Jensen felt that had no choice but be along for the ride.

 

Jared felt his breath go in and out, heart beating strong and steady even as sweat was pouring down his back from navigating himself and most of Jensen’s dead weight through the desert under the scorching sun. He concentrated on those simple biological mechanics while his feet ate up the miles, even as all those precious seconds ran through his fingers, and detection became more likely by the minute. He was so focused on monitoring his and Jensen’s breathing that he almost missed it, but the soft thump thump thump tickled something in the back of his mind, and when he made the connection his senses came online with a sudden clarity that almost brought him to his knees.

 

“Oh fuck.”

 

The swish of the razor sharp rotor blades was unmistakable now, and for once he didn’t fight the world tilt and the stream of calculations and measurements flooding his blue tinged vision. From the vicinity of his collarbone he heard Jensen protest weakly against their suddenly increased pace as Jared struggled to lead them safely over the rocky ground, scrambling towards an empty riverbed. He watched the pebbles roll down in front of his feet as he slid into the niche of an overhanging rock and prayed to all that was holy that they didn’t look too conspicuous from up in the air. Back pressed against the rough stone, he dragged the doctor down into a crouch with him. Jensen roused and began to mumble, but Jared leaned close and covered his mouth as fast as he could while he hissed under his breath:

 

“Be _quiet_.”

 

He could see the moment the other man began to hear it too, glassy eyes blown instantly wide, and breath catching against Jared’s fingers. They stayed that way, frozen, just inches away from each other while the patrolling helicopter raced right over their heads, and, in that moment, for the first time since he had woken up… Jared felt grateful to be alive.

 

He waited until the sound of the patrol had turned faint even to his heightened senses and then coaxed Jensen out of his hunched over position, grimacing alongside the other man when the move aggravated his aching ribs. The reason that they had just narrowly avoided being spotted turned out to be the fact that the fence was just a few hundred yards away, hidden by a jutting cliff. They both blinked owlishly at it for a couple of seconds and then Jensen went off in a sudden burst of adrenaline. Jared followed suit, and with little effort they cut an opening into the wire mesh that let them both through. Jensen checked his watch with a glance, tapped at it a couple of times and then was off to the left without another word. Jared still spotted it first though, a jeep, cleverly disguised with tarp and local shrubbery in a suspiciously military fashion. He grabbed Jensen’s arm and dragged him over to the vehicle, dragging away the cover quickly and finding the doors unlocked. He looked over to the passenger side where Jensen was holding onto the roof of the car with a white knuckled grip, but the other man finally managed to open the door and scramble into the passenger seat under his own power. Jared folded himself behind the wheel and found the keys stuck in the ignition, but then, they were fifty miles away from the middle of nowhere. Who was going to steal a car parked here? His attention reverted back to Jensen, who was trying to open the glove department with shaking fingers. He reached out, dragging the latch open and took out the little leather pouch that was tucked in there. Its content felt firm and square, papers, documents perhaps.

 

“No, not… the CD, take…”

 

Jared’s eyebrows crept up as he stared at the cover.

 

“We’re in the middle of the Great Escape, and you’re in the mood for the ‘Best of Mullet Rock’? Seriously?”

 

“No, jackass, put it in.”

 

Jared complied, still feeling a little sceptical, but once the disk had vanished into the slot, it whirred for a moment, and then the built-in GPS-system booted, started calculating and spewed out precise instructions.

 

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

 

A triumphant grin spread over Jensen’s ashen face.

 

“You should see what I can do with a toaster. Now, drive.”


	9. Epilogue

Jensen felt the humming of the engine shut off and blinked sluggishly, only half drifting out of his exhausted slumber, ache still sitting bone deep. Strong arms slid behind his back and under his knees, lifting him off the seat. Faint talking crept into his ears, Jared’s low rumble, a foreign, Latin accent.

 

After he’d been settled again he felt that tug behind his navel, and the popping of his ears that told him that they were up in the air. The last thing he noticed before he drifted off completely again were the fingers that wrapped tightly around the wrist of his left hand, his heartbeat pulsing steadily against the warm skin.

 

When he came to once more with the dip of a soft mattress, and a hand behind his neck slowly lowering his head, Jensen blinked his eyes open until Jared’s face swam into focus just inches away as he was carefully laying him down. They looked at each other for a moment, silent and still, until Jensen couldn’t hold back anymore and let all the want and longing for closeness pour out over his features. Even so, he still didn’t dare make a move, it wasn’t his place.

 

Jared’s expression didn’t change for a few terrifying seconds, but then he moved closer until his lips finally brushed Jensen’s, warm, and chapped and glorious. He drew back for a moment, trembling, eyes shining with … something, and then it was like a switch had been flipped, all teeth, and tongues and lips clashing with desperate abandon. Jensen’s hands came up, clawing at fabric, and muscle, and he wanted to draw Jared in, closer, take him deeper until he could satisfy that burning in his stomach, until his breath ran out…

 

Jared drew back with an effort, flushed and breathing heavily, but holding Jensen down when he tried to chase after him and whispered;

 

“No, not yet, we’ve got time for that, we’ve got time. Sleep, now, sleep.”

 

Jensen wanted to scream in frustration, protest, but before he could muster the energy, his limbs were heavy again and he slipped into deep sleep.

 

~*~

 

Jensen tugged himself loose from the last tendrils of sleep when the sun filtering through the half closed blinds hit him full in the face. He blinked rapidly and turned to the side, breathing calmly and enjoying the soft mattress a little bit. Then everything came rushing back, and he drew a sharp breath, followed by a little stab in the side, and the realization that he had no idea where he was or how much time had passed since he’d broken Jared out of… Jared.

 

When Jensen turned around slowly all the way he expected many things, but not to find the man fast asleep and curled towards him on the other side of the bed. The play of light and shadows on his sleeping face made him so beautiful that Jensen ached to reach out and touch, but he didn’t even know whether he’d dreamed up that kiss in his mind or not, or whether Jared might have changed his mind or…

 

Confusion and doubts muddled his thoughts, and he had to get out. Jensen carefully tugged away the sheet and padded out into the main room of the cabin on bare feet, looking around and then going over to open the door. That let in a whiff of salty air, and the sound of the ocean like he hadn’t heard it in many years. They seemed to have made it to their final destination after all, which filled him with infinite relief for a few moments. He stared out past the beach and into the sea while trying to order his thoughts and formulate a plan for what should happen next, drawing up a blank on both accounts. He thought of all the people he’d left behind without a word and would likely never get to see again. Jensen scrubbed his hand over his face in an attempt to disguise even to himself that there was moisture gathering in the corner of his eyes.

 

“Do you regret it?”

 

The words startled Jensen into turning around, and he had to lean back into the doorjamb because Jared was standing so close behind him.

 

“No.”

 

He felt a shadow pass over his face when he thought about the alternative.

 

“Was it worth it?”

 

Jensen licked his lips, but didn’t hesitate any more before answering.

 

“Yes. I… I don’t know, was it?”

 

There was much more in that question than just severed relationships and being on the run. It was about whether there was something, anything that held them together. Jared looked at him searchingly for a moment, a thick tangle of emotions running over his face. Then he bent down, their foreheads touching gently before their lips met, and Jensen remembered _this._ Oh hell yeah, this was it, and he was not going to let it go anytime soon. Also, he needed to send Jeff a huge ass gift basket, somehow.

 

They kissed leisurely for a few moments, searching, nipping, getting to know each other, but the heat fired them on, and soon they were exploring stubbled jaws and sucking hickeys into necks, Jensen shoving his hands under Jared’s undershirt, racking it up unceremoniously to feel the definition of the muscles underneath. Jared bit him over his collarbone in retaliation and slid his hands down to cover Jensen’s ass almost completely, squeezing in a decidedly possessive fashion. Jensen threw his head back and hissed, breathing heavily and scrambling together whatever was left of his wits to not … come … just yet.

 

Then Jared lifted him clear off the ground, which left Jensen no choice but to sling his legs around Jared’s narrow hips and meet his frantic thrusts with a slow, teasing grind. He just wanted to let his eyes roll into the back of his head and let go, but then Jared pressed him back into the wall, and a stinging pain pierced his chest. Jensen tried to not to flinch, ignore it and just get on, but Jared had noticed and stepped back immediately. Jensen would have fallen over backwards from the sudden loss of support if he hadn’t had one arm slung around Jared’s neck already as he was let down. Instead, Jared just walked them straight back to the bedroom where he gently laid him down on the covers before all but ripping his pants off. Jensen just continued to enjoy being laid out as a feast, lips, and tongue and fingers everywhere. He was a little startled to find Jared had produced lube and a condom from somewhere but too caught in the moment to do more than urge him on. He cried out helplessly when Jared buried his nose at the base of his cock before licking at him, while he opened him up. Jensen barely waited until he was loose before dragging him up into another scorching kiss and lifting his hips in a clear invitation. Jared grabbed his hips in a sure grip, thumbs digging into the groove of his groin, and fingers splayed wide to drag Jensen’s ass cheeks apart before he slid inside tantalizingly slow. Jensen couldn’t move to meet him at all and was left to tremble and twist the sheets, enduring the powerful and deliberate strokes at Jared’s mercy. He felt his body thrash when the energy just needed to go somewhere, but before long the pleasure that ran through his veins like an electrical current peaked and left him breathless and sated in a tangle of limbs and soaked sheets and surrounded by Jared in a pleasant haze.

 

Jared woke from a satisfied slumber and enjoyed the feel of a living, breathing body against his skin. It had been too long since he had sought that kind of connection to another human being, and even with all the ups and downs in his life over the last few months, he couldn’t begrudge himself the comfort of such an embrace. It sure wouldn’t be all violins and roses from now on; there were too many things that had happened, but he felt that he might have found some semblance of peace in this moment.

 

When he opened his eyes, he found Jensen looking back at him with the same thoughts written over his face.

 

“So, what happens next?”

 

The doctor had a small smile tugged in the corner of his mouth as he shrugged with one shoulder.

 

“All up to us, I guess.”

 

Jared felt a lazy grin spread his lips. He did have a few ideas for the immediate future at least. 

 

The End


End file.
